For Transient Tears, because her prompt induced the idea that brought this story to life, and for Heartbroken Confession, because it literally took me three years to finally understand her penname inside out.


The Truth About Our Fairy Tale

Fairy tales were made to teach lessons. It was never about the happily ever after.


My dress—the one my dear mother supplied me with—rendered me breathless right after I stepped into it. I could tell from the very beginning that Yuri, her personal designer, made it for me. How else would it turn out to be exactly as I pictured? It was made from the finest tangelo satin in all of Tokyo, heavenly soft with a glossy sheen. Every stitch and frill had been meticulously hand sewn by exceptional workers. The entire bodice was etched with a leafy pattern, and perfected by a small line of frills cascading down the front. It hugged me perfectly; he would have loved it. Below my waist, the dress gave way to elegant ripples, each one piling on top another beautifully. My first impulse, when I accidentally brushed one with my fingertip, was to lift an armful and bury my face in them.

Instead, I used my hands to cover my gaping mouth, not to hide my shock, but to stop myself from crying hysterically.

"This is going to be your wedding dress, honey." My mother walked over, gently placing a hand on my bare shoulder as she made the alluring comment. "It's perfect. Yuri made it exactly according to your wishes. We might just have to make a few more adjustments. I'll get Yuri to add on another layer of lace or silk netting. Oh, and we mustn't forget your train and veil."

I couldn't take my hands off of my face, or stop looking into the mirror. My eyes became brighter than ever as I somehow managed to hold back a river of tears. It was just water. The shine was just from all the water. Behind the tears, they were hollow and solemn, devoid of all emotion.

My mother hugged my shoulders and nestled her chin fondly into the corner between my neck and my shoulder. "I guess all that's left to do now," she whispered gently, "is find you a fiancé."

Just like that, she steamrolled the dam that held back my lake of tears. Already she had forgotten who I was really engaged to? A fiancé? Didn't she mean another fiancé?

Because he was the only one. He would always be the only one.

I sobbed my heart out as my mother pulled out a handkerchief and impeccably dabbed away every tear. I cried harder. She dabbed faster. There wasn't one drop of water that landed on our glossy, hardwood floor. When my tears turned from droplets into trails, my mother held the damp hanky under my nose, capturing all the fluids that flowed onto my face. She never gave me anything short of love. She kissed my cheek softly while muttering comforting words into my ears. But she didn't know that what she really did was wear my heart away piece by piece.

Finally, the empty comfort became too much to take. Grabbing the dress, I scampered out of the room barefoot. Somehow I made it through the labyrinth of my own mansion. My feet took me down the stairs onto the second floor, down another flight of stairs onto the first floor, and into the cheapest, most comfortable pair of shoes I could find. Without changing out of this gorgeous dress, I dashed off of the Sakura property.

Until now, I had never really given a thought about how I appeared to others in public. Always, my dad assigned at least one bodyguard to accompany me, disguised either as a relative or a friend. Alone, with no one, I finally noticed how many eyes were fixed on me. I finally noticed how hostile their stares are, how full of envy and jaundice, just because of a mere dress. Everyone seemed to have a beast contained inside of them, fighting the urge to spring on me and tear me to shreds.

My tears dripped faster. Why? Why would anyone ever think that? This gorgeous life of fame, of eloquent assets and fanciful endeavors no longer contained any appeal. I wasn't sure it contained any appeal in the first place. In retrospect, it was always him who lit up my world. I never knew how much he changed my mindset until his sudden departure. He was the defining moment of my life. He thrusted a pair of glasses onto my face and made me see the world in a different light. So what did it matter if I was descended from a prestigious lineage? What did I care if my dress was ruined? I didn't want to marry. I was never going to marry anyone but him.

And now, I would never marry him.

The city was blurry through my watery eyes. But now I was finally safe. I could finally blotch out their faces. Not one person in this throng of faceless people would forgive me for choosing to be with him. Why? Why must everyone expect only what was deemed acceptable by society? Why must I marry a prince just because my face appeared in magazine covers? If only people stopped for a second to think, and realize that nothing was ever what it seemed.

He was never the prince they made him to be. He was born a ponderer, a philosopher, and the most amazing philosopher I ever knew.

In our teenage years, we stumbled upon a valley and named it the Valley of Forever. We spent hours just lying on the soft grass. With his mesmerizing voice, he'd tell me of all his thoughts on life, and he always would do it with a fist outstretched towards the clouds. There, he'd shown and given me notebooks full of frustrated scribbles. His thoughts were always linear, always meticulous. I framed his articles, and sketches. I kept them secretly hidden in a locked drawer in my room. We often joked about getting him published, knowing that it could never happen because of the disgrace his unorthodox ideas would bring to both our families.

I remembered the days when I cradled him inside my arms, while he languished in dry sobs. Each time, I would coax him to escape to the Valley of Forever. There, he screamed his lungs out until his voice was hoarse. Until it hurt to breathe. His forlorn cries were usually words, and never longer than a simple sentence. The heartbreaking effect was delivered in the way that he said it. Natsume repeated it over and over, like an overpowering crescendo, each time louder and each time rawer.

Because the world had been so cruel to us. Because he was so tied down, to his parents and to me.

I want him so much.

With a mouthful full of satin, I choke-sobbed my way towards a blurry retail store. My senses were crippled. I couldn't see or hear anything around me, and I entered the store by tripping over a crack in the floor. Fortunately, a pair of arms caught me and brought me back onto my clumsy feet. Vaguely, I wondered how I seemed to the shopkeeper. A total wreck of a woman in a tangelo dress and mismatching gray sneakers was not something normally seen everyday.

"Are you all right?" I think it was a female voice.

Clutching the mask of ruffles with one arm, I pushed her out of the way with the other. I stumbled down the rows of racks, exhibiting outrageous clothing that was all the rage for the adolescents of Japan. I stumbled back, almost crashing into the same woman. Again, my legs wobbled like egg yolk. I reached out blindly and found myself grabbing onto the edge of a counter top.

"P-please," I managed to stammer. "I-I don't have any money, but I would trade my dress if you gave me a p-plain t-shirt, t-track pants a-and t-two thousand yen."

The cashier mumbled something to the woman. I couldn't make out the words completely in midst of all my sobs and hiccups, but I could tell from his tone that he was asking for her opinion. Slowly, I turned my bloodshot eyes to look at her.

"What would we do with it?" I barely heard her ask. "We don't sell that kind of merchandise. And we can't sell anything that's covered with… bodily fluids."

"P-please." I stumbled towards her again. "It's all I have." I let the ruffles drop for the first time, exhibiting the dress and uncovering the disgusting snot trails on my face. "I'm b-begging you. My dress is worth e-eighty thousand yen at l-least. Please. I'll g-give you a number and y-you can call it and the l-lady, she'll buy it back for w-whatever amount you name." Without much of a choice, I covered my face with my own two hands as another fresh wave of sobs exploded from my eyes and mouth.

The cashier walked over to the shopkeeper with two hands held out. He mumbled a series of words in fast succession, trying to coax her into changing her mind. She shot something back. It was a blur, like watching my parents argue at home, but not about love. Never about love. Always about failure to pick up an important phone call, or a business venue gone awry. I averted my eyes down, watching my teardrops stain the floor gray.

"Come on Sumire," I heard him say. "Just help the girl out for once. A plain shirt, track pants and two thousand yen? That's five thousand yen at the most. If anything, we can earn back double after selling her dress."

"Look at her!" Sumire exploded. "Where would she even get the dress in the first place? She's obviously from a rich family. She's your typical pampered daughter running away from home! Do you know what complications we could get ourselves into if we do buy the dress off of her?"

I heard loud steps, and a few clangs of plastic hangers clashing. Loud steps again. Then, two articles of clothing were shoved into my arms. The man peeled my hands from my face and dabbed the snot away with tissue. His dabs were rougher, more unrefined than my mother's, and when he shoved the tissue box into my arms I could still barely see his face.

He was dark-haired, navy-eyed, and smiling. "Hey, cheer up," he told me, handing me a roll of cash. "Sumire doesn't want me to go through with this deal, but I'd help out someone in need any day. You seem like you need a coffee, and something to eat. Here, just go change into these clothes and give me the dress when you're done. Oh, and don't forget to leave the number. I myself don't care, but—" He pointed discreetly at the curly haired woman and winked.

I nodded weakly, smiling back a little. He guided me into the change room and shut the door for me.

Alone and small, I stared at the girl in the mirror. What I saw looking back at me was a princess fallen from grace. Wiping a stray tear from my tear duct, I collapsed on the floor, ashamed at myself for harbouring these feelings for such a nice man. He alone helped me when no one else would. How could I feel jealousy eating my heart away each time I looked at him?

Unhappily, I stripped myself of the dress, balled it, and threw it into the corner. Grabbing the T-shirt, I threw it over my head of tousled hair. The tag stabbed into my back, but that was a trivial matter. I pulled the track pants over my skinny legs before noticing that they had no pockets. Without another choice, I tucked my money into the bra. After fixing my appearance to look at the very least presentable, I grabbed the dress and exited the changeroom.

"Here," I told the man, handing him the lump. He gave me a pen and I scribbled down my mother's secretary's number. "Thank you."

I threw my arms around him for a quick moment, longing to feel some sort of human comfort, some sort of support that told me I wasn't completely alone in the world. If he felt any sort of discomfort, he didn't show it openly. His body was tense at first, but eventually it relaxed. He even patted my back comfortingly several times.

Before long, that man too was behind me. I flew through the mall on light feet, threading in and out of these people, these consumers who fed our parents' prosperity and power. I could never stare into any given person's face for too long. When a stranger's eyes darted to me, mine darted down on reflex. One by one, my steps quickened. I soon found myself whizzing through the crowd so fast everyone else looked like a meteor. With my head tilted back, I felt the wind rush straight past my face and linger in the strands of my chestnut hair. Was this the feeling he described? Was this how it felt to be free?

My legs took me down a slope, a flight of stairs, and almost straight into a red car parked by the side of a road before I came to a sudden halt. I felt the high disappear as quickly as it'd come. My heart sunk into the depths of despair once again. His favourite colour was red. He had a red car. As soon as he could legally drive, we started using it to escape the house whenever our parents were in meetings.

Of course, he'd given it up, along with everything else, when he left.

"Taxi!" I cried in an anguished voice. "Taxi! Taxi! Taxi!"

My voice rang out, and several pedestrians shot me disgruntled glares. "Taxi…" I huffed one last time, dropping to my knees. It was of no use. The light was red on this side, and even if a cab was vacant, there was no way it could make it over to me. I was still a spoilt princess, crying for my primal needs and hoping that someone would just serve it on a silver plate.

But in real life, it wasn't like that. Even princesses couldn't always get their way. If we did, I would still have Natsume.

Natsume…

"Taxi!" I shouted, waving out at a yellow cab. "Taxi!"

It made its way over to me, and I jumped into the cab before it even stopped. My driver sped away immediately in an attempt to catch the green light before it changed. The momentum slammed me against the back of the hard seats, knocking all air out of my lungs.

"Where to?" he asked me as we slowed down.

"682 Kusajishi road."

With another sharp turn left, we were well on our way. While he drove, I stared down into my lap, recalling the shattering moment of my life. After his announcement, I shut myself in my room. There, I curled up into a ball for days on end, refusing to move except to eat and relieve myself. My mom came, and then she went. My dad came, and then he went. His parents came. They didn't leave so easily. They shook me hard, and yelled and screamed sharp demands at me. I still remembered his dad's rough hand scraping against my shoulder and his face right up in mine as if he could intimidate me into reveal the whereabouts of Natsume.

But all I did was limply tell him, "I don't know."

Only, I did. I'd always known where he would be. Natsume was where he always went when he had something on his mind—the Valley of Forever. Whenever we dropped by, he would sometimes drop in at a certain house. It was the house where all his dearest friends resided—his normal friends that he surreptitiously snuck off with to watch college sports games with. I knew without a doubt that I would find him there. I just didn't want to say it aloud because I didn't want to betray him, and because I was that afraid it would be too much. The desire to see him would engulf me, and it would break me completely.

Like how I was broken now.

Why? Why do they get him while I get nothing?

I cupped my two hands together on my lap as tear droplets began to fall again. Why was it that in this story, everyone got what I wanted the most? Why wasn't I granted freedom? Why didn't I have Natsume? Why did the world refuse to let us be together?

Why?

"Lady." The driver's voice was gruff. "Hey, lady, we're here."

"Thank you," I muttered, handing him the large roll of cash as I stumbled out of the car. "Keep everything."

Their house was just as I remembered it. The walls weren't bricked, but rather planked with wood, like a cottage. They were painted conventionally with the same cheap whitewash used to mark off trees. Only the porch still remained true to its yellowy wooden colour. The door remained wide open, as it always had in the daytime. There was nothing keeping me out except for a screen door, and the screen door was never locked either; an alarm beeped every time someone opened it.

Ruka poked his head out from the kitchen as soon as he heard me entering. "Kitsuneme, did you have a good—oh… Mikan…" Shooting a wary glance downstairs, he rushed over to me and set two firm hands on my shoulders. "What's wrong?"

I couldn't tell him. He wouldn't understand. I only rooted my feet and cried.

"Do you—" he gulped. "Do you need to see him?"

"Yes," I sobbed hysterically, gripping the sleeve of his button down shirt vigorously. "I want to see him. I want to see him so much, I need to see him. But I'm scared, Ruka. I don't want to go."

"There, there," he told me, stroking a hand up and down my back in a comforting gesture. "He wants to see you just as badly, Mikan. But even if you can't, that's okay. Don't force yourself. At least you made it this far. We can start out with little steps."

"He was mine," my voice was coarse and foreign to my own ears. "He was mine. He's supposed to be mine!"

"I know," Ruka said, trying to contain me as I thrashed about wildly in his arms.

Forming a spontaneous resolution, I broke free from his grasp, stumbling. Though he was shocked at first, Ruka's countenance soon showed sympathy, and he drew his arms back, fingers brushing my arm as I flew down the two flights of stairs to where Natsume was. My clumsy feet tripped halfway, sliding down three steps and hitting the wall with enough force to bruise my ankle for weeks. Despite the pain, I limped the rest of the way with determination. Even if my ankle was sawed off, I would still find a way to get across the room to where he was.

"Natsume!" I yelled into the dim corridor. "Natsume, where are you?"

"Hey Nat!" I heard a voice hoot. "Still got them girls coming, huh?"

There was a pause, and my heart dropped at the notion that he was deliberately hiding from me. But then he spoke. I couldn't believe my ears. His voice, a deep auto, sounded as pleasing as an hour long Tchaikovsky symphony. As soon as the first word entered my ears, I yearned for him. I yearned for him with all my heart. I wanted for him to speak to me, to hug me, to kiss me over and over until time no longer existed. Until he and I were the only things that mattered in the world.

"Koko, man. Could you leave for ten minutes? As in leave."

Rustles came from the room immediately in front of me. I limped in the direction just as a tall, spiky blond man exited. We met in the doorway. He was smiling until he finally looked down and noticed me. In slow motion, his teeth disappeared, his shining eyes filled with worry, and his smile diminished into a thin line.

"Mikan," the man said, finally grasping the full gravity of the situation.

As quick as he'd ever been in his life, Koko scooted past me and up the stairs, finally leaving me full view of my beloved's face. His lovely face… I wiped my tears just to get a clear view of it. Natsume's red eyes, his handsomest feature, were still as striking as they were the first time I laid eyes on him. They made my knees week. They knocked the breath out of my lungs. His eyes were framed by his adorably short eyebrows, which he always refused to get done. I drank up his presence thirstily. From his slender nose to his thin, firm lips, my eyes lingered with unrelenting desire. I wanted to touch every square inch of his skin.

"Natsume…" My voice trailed into a whimper, and the wretched tears quickly filled my window of sight, blurring out his face once again.

But it didn't matter, because in the next moment skin touched skin as I felt him engulf me with his arms. Steadily, Natsume laid one hand on my waist and used his other to cup the back of my head. I could see the glint of his red eyes through my tears. His face was blurred, as if the entire moment was evanescent. Only the touch of his hands and the caress of his soft lips ascertained his presence in this surrealistic moment. His eyelashes fluttered in a shower of butterfly kisses, catching the tear droplets from my own lashes and lifting them off.

Gently, he brushed a finger over the cups of my lower eyelids, clearing my vision once again. As usual, it was hard for me to read his feelings from his grim frown. Natsume's jaw was firm and mouth pressed together in a strong, thin line. Only his eyes served as a window to his heart. In them, I saw the most fervent emotions and the most passionate internal struggle.

"It's always been you," I murmured between kisses, "always. You are the only one."

His lips quivered, and his eyelashes trembled arrhythmically. He always did that when emotion overwhelmed him, because he refused to shed tears under any circumstances. So I cried even harder for my beloved and the pain he had to go through, even though he never told me a word of his plans. Especially because he never told me a word of his plans. For if I had known, I would never have let him go; I would have done all that was in my power to seduce him into staying. And he might have succumbed. Because he purposely didn't tell me, he made it so much easier for him to fly, and so much harder for us to cope.

"Forgive me," he sighed gently against my cheek.

"Severing ties, Natsume," I bawled. "How could you? A little more and we could have made it. We could have made it together."

"No we wouldn't," his voice was laced with pain. "I knew I would never make it from the beginning. I wasted twenty two years of my life in a cage, and I'm going to spend the next fifty eight searching for what it means to be free."

"You never tried," I cried, digging my hands into his shoulders. If I couldn't have him at all, then at least let him be mine entirely for this fleeting moment. "Why? Why did you leave me, Natsume? If you were going to fly, why couldn't you bring me into the clouds with you?"

"Because I'm not going to break you!" his firm shout resonated in every empty room of the basement, "just for my selfish purposes. Your family means everything to you, Mikan. You're daddy's little girl. You couldn't live without your mother. You love your grandfather to death. How could I let you live in a world where you're constantly running away from them? Even if we do—" his voice cracked "—get to spend our days together, how can you ever be happy?"

"How can I ever be happy knowing that I'll never marry you?" I shot back, gripping him tighter and digging my head in to his chest. "How can I ever be happy always hearing your dad talk of you as the disgrace of the family? Having my mom pretend that she never knew you? Having my dad frown at the very mention of your name? You could have stayed! We could have spent our lives together! Get married together! Grow old together! Why didn't you?"

"Because that's what our parents want. That's what they've always wanted. That's what we were born for. Doesn't it seem wrong to you at all?"

My eyes were hollow. "Isn't that what you want? You said you wanted to marry me. You said you wanted to spend your entire life with me."

"Are you kidding?" he screamed into the ceiling. "I have never, ever wanted to marry you! All I ever wanted was to love and be loved by you, earnestly, freely! I wanted to elope with you, Mikan. I've wanted to do it since we were ten. But we found out about our engagement when we were ten. How do you even think that made me feel? The one thing that was supposed to be mine and mine alone, I didn't even have a say in! You have no idea what it's like when all you've ever wanted to do is fly, and then someone hands you wings just because it's convenient for them.

"Come on, Mikan. I can be so much better than that! You can be so much better than that!"

"If I was so much better than that," I told him dully. "I would have you. I would be brave enough to take new chance. I would be able to see new worlds from my very own eyes instead of from a telescope. I would have broken free. But I'm not better than that, Natsume. What my parents handed to me, I wanted it. I wanted it so badly. I thought… I thought that I could have it all, and still come out happy. I thought that we could make a new world for ourselves, one that's different from what's destined for us, and come out together in the end. I never thought for a moment that it'd all end like this."

"But you thought wrong," he concluded for me.

"I thought wrong. How can I think so wrong?" I slid my hands under his arms into the embrace, up his chest, over the curve of his shoulders and neck until they were cupping his face gently. I scraped my thumb over his cheek, trailed it down to the corner of his lips and stopped. Swallowing, I admitted, "I thought loving you would be the answer to everything."

"But it's not," he replied in a strained voice. Gently, Natsume slid his fingers out of my hair. His hand gently lifted from the back of my head and found its way on top of mine. He squeezed it lovingly, brought it to his lips, and kissed my fingers. "If I could give you the world, then I would have stayed by your side forever. But I can't do anything but love you." He kept lips touching the back of my hand, but averted his empty eyes to a remote corner of the room. "And in the end, I'm just a person you hold close to your heart, Mikan. These feelings will neither evolve nor make you greater. I can't give you the one thing you need the most. I can't make you ambitious."

"You gave me the power to chase dreams," I sobbed, feeling like a lost and lonely little kid in his arms. I wished he would never let me go, never leave me to the merciless jaws of the unknown world. I wished he could keep me safe.

"You chased my dreams, Mikan, with me. I can fly freely now. It's your turn to grow wings. And if we have to fly in opposite directions, at least we can defy gravity together."

"But I love you," I murmured softly. "I love you… I love you."

The entire house was silent except for my cries. There weren't any footsteps, or the running of water, or even the slightest rustle. There were only strangled, desperate cries of anguish coming from my mouth. I cursed the world for tearing us apart; cursed our differences for deepening this rift; and cursed the perpetual, immeasurable desire for self improvement that could neither be subdued nor quenched. Because they all stacked up on top of each other, brick by brick, to build an indestructible, insurmountable wall between he and I. So I screamed over and over into his chest until my lungs burned with liquid fire. "I love you!" But it was us against the world. And we weren't strong enough. "I love you!" But they condemned me, caged me in, and buried me six feet underground with their vices. "I love you!" But I couldn't have you. "I love you! I love you! I love you…"

His strong hands clutched me tightly, trying to make our bodies mesh into each other. It wasn't enough. It could never be enough. We would never squeeze in this moment what we could have had for decades. We would never be able to give each other enough kisses to linger through the years. We would never be able to give enough love to sustain the cruel wearing of time. All we could do was give each other one moment. And in this moment, skin would sear skin, imprinting fingerprints, memories, and a million different emotions.

These hysterical cries could never express the longing I harboured for the future of my dreams.

These hysterical cries could never express the anguish I felt when those dreams shattered violently.

But in that moment, his frantic touches held me together. They were like a thread that wove through the cracks of my heart, never completely sealing it up, but patching the scar so that it would never run deeper. I would carry this scar for the rest of my life. For him. Only for him.

Because he was the only one.

He would always be the only one.

When the hysteria finally left, my throat was so dry I thought I would start coughing up blood. My brain was rendered a jumbled up mess, throbbing in my head to the beat of my heart's palpitations. Time seemed to pass by a million times slower when pain consumed my entire being. Crying hurt. Hiccuping hurt. Breathing hurt. Living hurt.

Staying hurt.

"If I leave," I choked, "will I be okay?"

With a calloused hand, Natsume brushed aside my bangs, exposing my forehead completely so that he could plant a gentle kiss on it. "If you leave, you'll be more than okay. If you leave, you'll become great. You'll shine so brightly a million stars will dim in comparison. You'll shine so brightly I'm going to look like a black hole in comparison.

"I only ask you to come back to me, just once more, so I can finally see your true radiance for the first time."

I nodded twice into the damp blotch on his button down shirt. He must have felt my chin digging into his shoulder, because his arms lifted my face off of his chest. We stood there in that transient moment, with our hands clutching each other's faces. Natsume's striking eyes met mine again. He hid nothing from me. Emotions flashed across his irises like the reckless but powerful flickering of flames. In his internal struggle, he unconsciously bit down on his lower lip and for a moment, I thought I saw a thin coating of water build up on top of his lower eyelid.

And then, painfully, I tore away from his arms, because even though it was still daylight, the clock had just chimed midnight. I had no more glass shoes. My fairy tale was over.

A barefoot Cinderella, I took my tattered rags all the way down to the Valley of Forever. Our haven never changed a bit since Natsume and I snuggled in its crannies when we were teenagers. Not a tree or shadow was in sight. The plain grass still stretched until it touched the horizon. The clouds still drifted in the air aimlessly. They were coloured a plethora of orange and reds, tinted from the glorious sunset. With widespread arms, I dove and rolled down the hill, catching bits and pieces of flying grass in my hair and clothes along the way. The world, a ball of neverending colours, spun in a million circles before I came to a stop at the ravine. There, I curled up into fetal position and bawled one last time. Then, lifelessly staring into the outstretched path before me, I hiccuped myself to sleep.

When I woke up, I would finally accept that my heart, like our engagement, would forever remain in shambles.


Yes, Kusajishi is a reference to Bleach, but mainly because I didn't feel like coming up with a fictional Japanese name.

A gallon of tears was shed in the production of this story. It hope it made you cry as much as I did.

Please fave & review! Happy New Year!

-IndigoGrapefruit