A Heart's Riddle: Direction of Affection~

Kikyo took me to her room and suddenly I found my hair being worked upon. She had such a funny natural quality to her, I couldn't help but laugh. And it was good, she'd smile when I laughed. She was funny, very comic. And liked to be considered that way.

Under the soft touches of her hands and her fingers doing the necessary work on my hair, I closed my eyes and relaxed and she talked to me. Trying to take my mind off the fact I was having my hair completely redone.

"So, you're some lucky lady's prince charming are ya? Did you book the garden here for the wedding and make sure it was okay with the king and queen?"

I smiled and laughed nervously.

"Well yes. But I'm not just some girl's prince charming, I'm her prince charming. The princess."

"Wait a sec! You mean to tell me that you're marrying the king and queen's daughter?"

I nodded.

"Well hold up, which one? The younger one or the older one?"

"The older one. Mel. She fell in love with me on this last quest or journey we went on and I fell in love with her. I was originally in love with her younger sister, and she was in love with me, or what she thought she knew of me. See there was this curse that she fell under that made her visualize all she wanted in a lover when she looked at me, which would have been fine, if she didn't see me as a boy. She thought I was male, when I'm really not. Blinded by love, we called the curse."

I took a pause and she looked curiously at me, unbeknownst to me, since my eyes were shut.

"So basically, she was taken by these bad guys and being that I was someone close to her, as was Bryant, and Mel, her older sister, we all figured we'd go on this mission to get her back together. We needed to find her and return her home safely. But along the way, spending more time with Mel than Melli, I began to slowly fall out of love with her, and in love with Mel, it seemed. And well, eventually we undid the curse, explained things to her, and then an old boyfriend of hers came back and reconciled things with her, and they fell back in love. So everything worked out for the better."

The stylist then nodded and laughed in approval, sighing as if she understood just what I was talking about, exactly.

"Ah such a great tale! The stories of young love, they never get old! And uh, you know, his majesty is okay with this?! I mean didn't he freak out because you a girl and she's a girl?"

"At first yes. But that worked out as well."

She smiled and then continued to work on my hair, curious.

"How did you do that, prince?"

"Well, there was this curse I knew about that Mel had, and it was a horrible one. It activates with anger and it puts not only a horrible strain on the person with it's body, but it destroys, destroys a lot and everything around it. It's a tremendous power, from what I know. So, taking that into account, I knew that eventually it could be very harmful down the line if it wasn't stopped. And not only that, but I needed a way to prove to her father that I loved her very dearly and it was real love. I needed something to prove I'd do anything for this family to protect it. And her. I needed a way to get rid of that curse. And so, I tracked it down to the forest on my own and found the man responsible for the curse. A man from my past as well as Mel's named Souji Mikage. He was the distributor."

I took a pause.

"So he made a deal with me, taunting at me along the way. And he took Mel's curse mark, and gave me my own, and transferred all of the power of hers onto me, as well as feeling the effects of my own shocking me internally. I can tell you, of all the battles I've been in, I've never felt pain such like that before ever. Luckily, Mel and Bryant came to my rescue and I managed to break free of the curse mark and rid of it, as well as rid of that man. Kill him, so he could wreak no more havoc on this world. As soon as I did that, any curse mark he gave to anyone vanished. And then we returned to the kingdom, and I explained the whole thing to his majesty, and he understood, a bit shocked, but understood that I had no intention of giving up. And he eventually was okay with us being able to date."

Another pause.

"So we decided marrying would be best. I'd have a place to live and more people to call my family. And a kingdom to protect. And someone to love and hold onto. And be near always. I'd always have someone there, and so would she. So would the kingdom."

I smiled. "And that's the story. That's why we're marrying today."

She smiled and continued to work on my hair, almost done now. She had colored the top strands of it, little bits and pieces a lighter pink that my naturally almost darker pink hair. Then she gelled and brushed it to a certain regal prince like style, before taking another comb and scissors and trimming the split ends. Then she took her hands and messed it up again, so that the gel dispersed throughout the hair giving it a shine. And then she combed it once more, into a regal style, and it had a very soft feel to it, as she had washed it as well. She took her hands and began to put her finishing touches on the hair. And once she told me to open my eyes it was complete. I smiled, my short hair had never looked so professional before. I truly did look like a prince.

"You like it?"

"Yes, it looks amazing. Thank you so very much."

It was only then when we stood next to one another, had she realized just how tall I was and how much taller than her I was as well. She laughed, finding the height difference a little funny. And as she went to place the apron back on the wrack in the bathroom, she kept her sights on the chest area.

"You planning to bind them or leave them out?"

I blinked and then realized just what she was talking about.

"Hm, I don't know really. It all depends on what Mel would want I guess. But I don't have time to ask her, and plus it's bad luck to see the bride before the wedding. So... what am I gonna do?"

"I think you should let me handle them. I mean, bind them. And I'll help you out with it. But we don't wanna bind it so it cuts off your circulation and reshapes your body. And we don't want to bind them so it looks like you have none to begin with. And I mean like a deformed chest or something like that. Oh whatever, let me stop my rambling and help you out, k sugar?"

She smiled and led me to the other part of her room, where her dressers and bureaus were. She had scissors meant for cutting tape and some bandages, ace bandages. And then some little metal things to keep it in place. She asked me to take off my top and I did, having an undershirt on as well. I took that off too so my chest with the bra was revealed to her. She began to wrap the bandages around me in a certain way, and then cut it with the scissors in the right places. At certain times she took one of the small metal place holders and put it in to hold the position of the bandage. When she was done...

"Go ahead, princey. Put your clothes back on and check it out. Your chest should be a natural reduced, or natural flat."

She smiled and I did as told. Amazing, she'd managed to make me look like a true, real prince.

"Wow, I can't thank you enough Kikyo, you're an amazing hair stylist, and costumer."

"Don't worry about it, hun. It's what I do. And I do makeup and other things too. I used to, after all, be in charge of the doing the queen's makeup and hair each day, and the king's uniform fitting. I do that as well. I used to have my own shop but no one was coming, so I went out of business, and the queen and the king started to get older and had no use for the things I used to do. And so I just became a gardener here."

"Oh well it's fascinating you know so much. But, I think I have an idea. Wedding's first though! I have to get to the backyard garden!"

I started on my triumphant walk there. Finally, marriage would happen. But I stopped before I exited her room.

"Are you coming?"

Excited, Kikyo immediately followed. Finally she'd have a chance to see how this wedding and her work turned out. And we were on our way to the backyard garden.