Evening class
“Get yourself somewhere else, monkey!”
Goku looked at Sanzo –
His breathing treasure
His living gold
His risen sun
His perfect food
- who was scowling at him and telling him to go away.
Goku opened his mouth to argue. The newspaper was lowered further with an ominous deliberation. Purple eyes narrowed onto him, glittering with threat.
Goku shut his mouth. The face under the blond hair, the face which wrapped all he loved best in the world, except perhaps beef teriyaki and gyoza and onigiri and tempura mushrooms and – (here Goku hauled his attention back out of the kitchen), that adored, Sanzo face now presented a defence like a stone castle with five thousand arrows pointing at him. Boiling oil. Cannonballs! No monkey could misunderstand its meaning.
Still fidgeting at the end of Sanzo’s bed, Goku hesitated, whilst the fluids in which his animal nature contained its instincts circulated through that small portion of his brain which controlled his actions (sometimes). His eyes continued to beg for a change of heart. There was none; if anything, the purple stare became a few degrees more dangerous.
From the other bed, Hakkai sensed a crackling of opposition in the air; he looked up and stopped combing Hakuryu. There was an unusual silence.
Then, something in Goku resolved into a peaceful obedience and he left the room quietly, almost gracefully and almost – almost smiling.
It wasn’t that he had achieved an understanding of being a nuisance, but the clouds of his mind had parted enough: if the only sun in the sky wanted him to leave the room, then, this could easily be done and was the right thing to do. On top of that, Goku felt strangely satisfied – not even slightly sad about leaving, not even slightly concerned with the reason why. He was simply content to have done for Sanzo what Sanzo wanted him to do.
Goku could not recognize this as his first sign of maturity, but Hakkai, who had expected the sound of the fan and an atmosphere of great trauma, was surprised and pleased and again surprised and thought that, at last, Goku was beginning to “learn Sanzo”. That only left the kappa to start classes!
