Khoe A Tale of Sadness Joy Ch 03
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Khoe, A Tale Of Sadness & Joy Ch. 02 free porn video
***Hmmm, a little bonsai tree, a little um, manure-spreading, some light conversation, …
What could go wrong?
0_o
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Taeko was looking for a regular job. She found herself wandering in the aisles of a business supply store, gradually working her way to the front with a small shopping cart which by then contained a laptop PC, an all-in-one printer, scanner and FAX, some art supplies, a graphics tablet and a couple of blocks of plain white paper.
It felt strange to her, this business of trying to build a semi-disposable life for herself. For most of her adult life, she’d been very self-reliant to her way of thinking. To a person born in most cultures and societies, that degree of self-reliance was not even possible. Most humans have other humans in their lives, people who they interact with, live with, love with and care for.
All that Taeko had on this side of the planet were contacts, people who she could get in touch with in order to obtain documents, money, even vehicles or weaponry. They were not the same thing. To meet one of her contacts in any social way would be very awkward indeed, the other person waiting silently to be told what was wanted or needed so that they could reply with a price. There was no friendship to be had there.
She was almost at the cashier for her short line when her attention was drawn by the presence of a man behind her. She didn’t look much, other than to get a glimpse of his overall clothing peripherally as a form of shorthand in the art of quick recognition. She didn’t need to see his face then in most cases, and in this case, she didn’t look that far.
She pretended to be interested in a bin of bright highlighting pens for a moment, but she didn’t understand the pricing. The cashier explained that the price was for three of the pens and Taeko smiled then and chose three different colors to add them to her purchases.
Just then, another cashier looked over and said, ‘I can take you here, sir,’ and the man walked past Taeko and set his purchases down on the counter. Taeko looked at him then from behind.
He was dressed in slightly dirty clothing and after a second, she knew that it was from working, so that got her interest a little. Taeko had never really known a man in much of any social context. The ones which she’d known had been superiors, mostly, and the ones that she’d been to bed with had mostly been targets for her in her unusual line of work. Sleeping with someone was an age-old way to get close enough to do what she’d been sent there to do. In the present day, it almost always worked as a means to get to a fool who couldn’t pay his gambling debts and had managed to evade the other forms of contact.
She thought about that as she looked a second time, taking in details now. He wore workboots which were clean, though dusty, and his shirt looked to have been washed recently and he wore it with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. She thought about the dustiness on him and it came to her that he might be a farmer. From what she’d seen, farming here was a little different from what she’d seen elsewhere in her travels, though not all that much. He didn’t look more than a little dusty to her.
Any other woman might have looked at him for the shape of his body, and Taeko did as well, but her gaze — as well-concealed as it was — lingered for a few seconds. She wondered if other women saw him as only a laborer or someone of a lower social stature. What she saw was a man who worked for a living and to a girl with hard-working fishermen in her upbringing, that wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily.
He was a little broad-shouldered and she could see that by the sleeves over his upper arms, he was fit and she noticed his narrow waist. If she had to guess, she’d have put his age at somewhere in his early thirties, but then she hadn’t seen his face. It was just what came to her.
That was when she noticed the hair on his forearms.
It caused her to look elsewhere on him, as much as his position allowed. He was about two meters tall and the skin that she could see was tanned, so he spent a lot of his time outdoors, she guessed — probably being a farmer.
It was her turn with the cashier then and she paid and was ready to leave in only a few minutes. She glanced at him as she turned to go and she saw his face in a rearward profile. It was then that she knew what it was about his hair. It was golden.
It wasn’t as though she’d never seen a blonde man before — she’d seen many of them in her travels — especially here. They didn’t do much of anything for her. Not many of the men here did.
But this one … his hair wasn’t really blonde. It looked to be more of a light brown, and yet, it was as though the hair on his arms and what she could see curling out from underneath the ball cap that he wore was trying to be blonde, as though it wanted to be, but had been cast into the role of being brown and rebelled whenever it had the chance for it.
It almost made her smile as she walked past and out of the store.
By this time, Taeko had been here long enough to have seen the need for saddlebags for her bike, so now it wore a set of hard fiberglass bags which were fine for some things and not enough for others — such as her printer. But she’d thought about this and had tons of bungee cords to tie it down with. She was in the process of that when she saw the man walk out and head toward a pickup truck. He got in and drove away long before she was done securing her printer.
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The next day was Saturday. Taeko had gotten her housework done and a bit of yardwork as well, just wanting to clean the place up a little. The old farmhouse had never had much of any pretense to it, but it was where she lived for the moment so ….
There had been evergreens planted around it many years ago and as they’d grown taller, the lower branches had died from being in perpetual shade. Some previous owner or resident had sawn them off to clear things a little. Taeko found a rake and went a little further hoping that if she removed a lot of the dead pine needles, the thin grass might have a chance at life. Somewhere in that, she’d seen the little seedling.
There were lots of them around here and there, but this one had a nice shape to it, so she dug it up with care and looked until she found a little oval pot. One thing led to another and before she knew it really, she was sitting on the old front porch in the thin rays of whatever sunlight could make it through the pines. She’d found some cast-off copper wire in a cable and a little work yielded her one of the conductors stripped bare.
That was how Kerry found her as he came up the long driveway.
She saw him coming after he’d parked his truck out on the road, but she gave no sign that she was aware of his approach. She recognized him as the man in the store and wondered about it, but she reasoned that she’d find out what he was here for soon enough. Besides, she was enjoying her tea and her little pine tree.
He stood in a bit of amazement as he watched her pot it and press the soil down. She’d moistened the roots and the soil, so her fingers were a little muddy. She didn’t seem to notice it at all as she lifted her cup to sip her tea thoughtfully as she turned the pot this way and that to regard the slightly bent and twisted sapling there. He watched as she moved a little of the dirt to reach in carefully and lift one root a little and then replace the earth so that the ‘knuckle’ of that root would one day show as though the tree was ancient and weathered.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘Is Mr. Nakatami at home?’
Taeko looked up and smiled after a moment, ‘Yes,’ she said with an accent which was at the same time both pleasant and unreadable to him, ‘I think that he must be by now. He was here on business for a time before I arrived, but he had to return hom
e. I am his niece. How can I help you?’
‘I’m Kerry Browne,’ he said, ‘Your uncle rented this house from my uncle late last year. My uncle has passed away and I’m trying to clean up his affairs. I wanted to tell Mr. Nakatami that I won’t be renting this property much beyond the end of September. I’ll be selling the land.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Am I being … ev… evicted?’
‘No,’ he smiled, ‘but before that time, you should think about finding another place to live, that’s all. If I was going to be living in the area, I’d probably keep renting the place to him — or you or … somebody.’
He looked around at the place for a moment, ‘And if I was, I think I’d want to do a little work on it too. This place is pretty tired.’
She nodded as she looked at the sapling again. ‘I am Khoe.’
He looked at her, ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t — ‘
‘Khoe,’ she smiled, ‘K-ho-eh. Would you mind holding this little wire for me for a moment? My little friend here needs her branches shaped and I don’t have enough hands for everything.’
‘Sure,’ Kerry smiled as he stepped forward, ‘Show me what you need.’
She reached for his hand and positioned it for him before she began to carefully wind the wire around one of the branches, ‘This is some wire that I found in the garage,’ she smiled as she worked, ‘it’s much too stiff for this, but it will have to do for now.’
‘I think I saw you at the office supply place yesterday,’ he said as he watched her.
She smiled a little again as she looked up for a moment, ‘You think that you saw me? You are not certain that you saw me, or you are not sure that you were there? I can help. I saw you, so you were there.’
He looked a little flustered then and it made her laugh a little, ‘Sorry. I have trouble with some phrases in English sometimes. A normal turn of phrase sounds strange to me. I know what you meant.’
‘Do you do this often?’ he asked, ‘I mean bonsai? It’s an old art.’
‘I have, but not lately,’ she said, ‘I am an artist and I use many forms of expression. If I was going to go on living here, I would ask if I could make a garden, but this is not the best place for that.’
She told him that he could let go then and she cut off the excess wire and sitting down with the pot on her knees, she reached over to a little tray and held a piece of moss over the soil in an experimental way for a moment. When she had it the way that she wanted it, she took a pair of scissors and cut it to size, pressing it down before she took a few small pebbles and pressed them down around the edges of the moss. In that setting, they looked like boulders.
‘I have always liked to create little scenes in gardens. Zen gardens are my very favorites.’ She held up the little tree and decided that she liked it for the moment, ‘You like bonsai?’
‘I’ve never had any,’ he said, ‘but I admire them.’
She held it out to him with a pleased smile, ‘Then you have one now. Keep this in a place out of hard sun for longer than an hour at a time and when you water it, be sure to carefully brush a little water into the moss with a finger. Moss can be very hard to please and it may die regardless of what you do. If it dies, I would suggest that you leave it. It may surprise you and come back.’
‘Thank you,’ he smiled, ‘very much. This is beautiful, more so because I saw it being done.’ He looked a little uncomfortable for a second, ‘I’m afraid I only know a little of Japanese manners. I … I think I ought to bow a little right about now, right?’
It made her laugh and she nodded a little, ‘I suppose that might be correct if it’s what you wish to do, but this isn’t Japan, and so it isn’t necessary.’
‘But you are Japanese, aren’t you?’ he asked and then felt immediately foolish. ‘Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to pry. It just came out.’
‘Why do you ask?’ she inquired, ‘And by the way, I’m not offended. It opens the door for my own questions.’
Kerry smiled in thanks for the way that she’d gotten him out of the gaffe, ‘You look Japanese to me, but I hear something else in your voice. I just don’t know what it is.’
She laughed then and it came to him as a thrill before she looked up, ‘I have heard it said that to most of the people here that, outside of their communities, all Asian people look alike. So you can spot a Japanese person when you see her?’
‘Not always,’ he said, ‘Asia is a big place with many nationalities in it. But I can usually pull a few of them out based on mannerisms, speech and things like that. For example, I’d have been surprised to hear a Chinese accent from you.’
His jaw dropped then as she recited a little poem in flawless Mandarin, and she chuckled to see the effect on his face. ‘I can speak several languages, though English is not my best. You are partially correct, however. I am partly Japanese. We can leave it at that, because you will never guess the rest. Well you might,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘but I have only a little while left to live here from what you have said.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kerry said, ‘I’ve been trying to reach your uncle to tell him. I tried sending a registered letter, but…’
‘I have been forwarding his mail,’ she lied, ‘I do not open what is addressed to him, or I’d have known of this before. You don’t need to look so saddened, I have nothing to tie me here. I am on a long vacation. I’ve spent some time here and it is enough. I have many photographs to paint from, if I wish. They’re nothing much by themselves, only bits and pieces of grass or little flowers that I have found, but from them, I can work and that was the purpose.’
‘You said that you like Zen gardens?’ Kerry asked, ‘To work on them, I mean.’
‘Yes,’ she nodded, ‘Do you have a little one in your truck or something?’
‘I have one,’ he grinned, ‘believe it or not. I’ve got a house out west and it has a garden, but it needs a lot of work and I don’t have a clue. How do you pronounce your name again?’
‘Khoe,’ she grinned, and she spelled it. ‘I can spell ‘Kerry’ or any of the variations for that name.’
‘No you can’t,’ he smirked a little, ‘my name is pronounced that way, but I’m named after a long-gone people, not a person. My dad’s a stickler for history.’ He winked at her, ‘I’d almost like to see you try, though. It starts with a ‘c’.’
She tried as many of the variations that she could think of, but he only grinned.
‘Fine,’ she smiled giving up, ‘How is it spelled?’
Her mouth opened as he spelled it out for her, ‘C-i-a-r-r-a-i-g-h-e.’
‘What sort of name is that?’ she asked, ‘I have always loved the way that things make no sense in English until you find the little key in yourself and then it is easy. This … a name like that…’ she shook her head.
‘It’s Irish,’ he smiled, ‘a Gaelic word for a people who were older than they were. ‘It means ‘the people of Ciar’, some big warrior guy somewhere back then, I guess. Where will you go? I mean after you leave here?’
‘West,’ she shrugged, ‘I love mountains and forests. I want to see what is there. Tell me of your garden. Maybe I can meet you and tell you what it needs before I wander off to see the mountains.’
‘Well, it’s in some mountains,’ he laughed, ‘Not miles in, but it’s about an hour from the nearest city and about twenty minutes or so from the closest town.’
‘Would you like some tea, then?’ she asked, ‘It sounds interesting to me already, and if I am correct in the feeling that I have, it will need some telling.’
One tea turned into several over the afternoon and she sat looking at him over the kitchen table as he worked to sketch her a map of his garden and how he remembered it. She was looking at the pencil in his right hand. As she watched, she wondered a little about the callouses that she’d felt there in that first touch as she’d taken his hand to guide it so that he could hold on to the piece of wire for the little bonsai that she’d made for him.
Aside from the callouses which she expected to be there on the hands of a man who worked with them, there was a thick line which ran along the inside from about the middle knuckle of his thumb, along the web and most of the way along the inside of his index finger. She was trying to think of a plausible reason for it to be there in the work that he did running the farm implements or doing the chores of the occupation. She couldn’t think of one, other than what would have been on the hands of many men in a long bygone age. She knew how a man might come to develop callouses like that.
She knew that because she had one there herself, but on her, there was one on each hand, the right one being a little more pronounced, though neither was especially noticeable.
Her gaze drifted to his face, listening to him as he spoke during his struggles to make the map clear to her, as if there was no way that it could convey what he wanted to describe to her of his garden’s features. He was wrong, but Taeko held her tongue. She wanted to hear the way that he felt about it and what he wanted. His hair had her attention again for the moment, the way that the errant curls peeked out at her with their golden tips. She was having thoughts that caused her to wonder what it would feel like to touch it for a moment. To her, the hair of most westerners was fine and soft to the touch.
She was about to give her head a little shake as she caught herself, but then he raised his head to look at her as he tried to emphasize a point that he thought he wasn’t stressing properly enough to get the feeling across. He was, but that didn’t matter. It was the first time that he was looking directly into her eyes as he made his point and Taeko found herself lost in the light of those blue eyes.
She remembered reading accounts of the infrequent arrivals of Caucasian men long ago during the feudal period of Japan. To the people of that time, they were seen as barbarians, large, loud and crude – and really hairy. When the Americans had arrived to force trade, it was perhaps the first time that people with skin, hair and eyes such as his had been seen there by a lot of people. Those barbarians were considered to be demons by the locals, for the way that the light green and gray and blue eyes could hold a person’s gaze, and it was a warning to never look into their eyes or there was a risk that one’s spirit could be stolen by them.
When the Russians had arrived to claim the other islands in the area, the type became a lot more known, but then of course, a lot of it had been about conflict.
Now, in the little kitchen of the worn-out old farmhouse where she lived for now, Taeko was sitting with one of these demons only inches away from her. She’d seen them before, she’d just never felt the pull like this. A part of her wanted to push her fingertips through the hair which wished to be golden so much. She wanted to remove that ball cap and run her fingers through that hair, knowing full well that she’d also feel the dampness there since it was summer.
She had a strong urge to do that if she could and look into the cerulean eyes which now regarded her and hid whatever dark urges might lie far down behind their open friendliness. Taeko had control — just as she always did. But a little part of her wanted to throw that control away as her fingers felt that hair and she brought her face closer to those eyes and glanced now and then at lips like she had never seen this close up before in her life.
She didn’t do any of those things, of course, instead, she reached over and took the pencil, pointing to a few of the features in his garden as he’s mapped it out and she asked a few questions, pointing to one thing in particular. There was a little stream which ran through the yard and there was a pond, beyond that was a pair of lines which crossed the line of the stream and it was what she indicated now.
‘It’s a small bridge in a stand of trees,’ he said, ‘and it’s one of my favorite things there. It’s made of stone somehow and it arches — well, here …’ he began to sketch quickly and in a few moments, she was looking at a small causeway, as he’d said. There were no handrails or anything, just the structure. ‘I don’t even know how it was made, but the whole thing is covered thickly with moss and grass and you can walk on it.’
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