fandom:
X
title: jiyuu : freedom
pairing: Saiki + Hinoto
rating:
pg-13
Description – Hinoto-hime goes through the city knowing the end of her world is near…
Disclaimer – X belongs to Clamp.
An angel is a human without wings.
To get into heaven,
you must earn your keep.
So with wings,
you can't get in by just being 'good'.
You must live:
Humbly knowing you're never perfect,
that you'll fail to protect yourself many times,
that your love is in the will
To live through others,
Not just for yourself.
jiyuu : freedom
By miyamoto yui
When you swim in the darkness, you wonder when you are able to come out. There is no sense of beginning or ending, just that you are always waiting. With no indication of how you can reach the light on the surface that others take for granted, you must swim deeper and deeper into yourself.
It is like being in the crowded rush hour train, pushed until your body becomes part of a human tetris puzzle. You somehow are forced to fit, but no one knows who you are. And nor do they care to. Everyone's put there by the random pick of the universe though everyone made a 'choice' to be there at that particular minute.
Except, strangely, in a place where there are many people, it is deathly still. No one talks to anyone. They're too into themselves, too scared to talk to the person next to them and so they rely on their cel phone to talk for them…
But what is the use of reading or emailing a friend when you know that is only comfort, a roundabout, lazy way of talking to 'yourself' somehow?
As I float from apathy to passion to subdued to listlessness to energetic, each person's feelings go through me on my flight through their daydreams, and dreams if they sleep soundly in the train.
Yet unlike the sea, the city is so full of noise.
In the city of Tokyo, a new store that rises and falls before the year is over, always go so quietly. But in the mix of people that change their preferences for visages with exact dates of the year, how come I appear ageless? My eyes can see neither the day or night nor the seasons that the people think is so troublesome. Like the afternoon sun blocked by the cloudy skies and the wind pushing through in a fog around the city, they are all just background pieces that appear inside my visions.
At least, these people have the ability to feel with their eyes. But they just waste it within pools of shallow goals.
I'm just a receptor for all their wants and their needs.
Does it make any difference that I am part of the elite class of people who will change the world? In the end, does it really matter?
We are all the same, seeking to be Alive.
I just happen to be in a body where my heart lives, but my flesh does not answer my commands to move it.
Or did this mean that the people who came to my realm were extraordinary not in their powers but in their control of their lives? They were chosen because they still had a dream in this desolate city while everyone was following everyone else in circles here?
No matter what generation, now, the children have no ideals though they have their bodies. They have no souls, but the pretty pictures of advertisements to guide their senses and their hands to pay the money for moments of happiness that they should have earned with their own effort.
And the few that fight are suffocated by the waves that do not want 'change' or 'difference'.
Yet with all I could give this Earth, I couldn't lift my fingers up towards the sky. I didn't really know what that meant either, just another image in someone's nightly journey that I've seen.
I could only wish to give people the ability to have a dream that they've lost along the way.
Whomever is the Being that created me to live such a life and to do such things, why do I feel alone though I can see so far for the ones who cannot even be motivated to wake up in the morning when the typhoon hits with the wild winds and heavy rains?
Am I free because I do not have to deal with these everyday troubles?
But if I am human, aren't I made to experience those things too?
Everyone aims to be 'special' and in the end, they want to be 'ordinary'. Why must that be? Is it because it hurts when you know the responsibilities of what it means to be 'special' or 'chosen'?
I can only go as far as others close their eyes to see me. I gain the energy of this city, whether good or bad, through these people's abysmal desires.
I can see what they truly want, these things that they cannot ever scream to the person next to them on the train. They want the destruction of themselves: To be free of being around so many people yet no one understanding them as they are. They want to keep everything as it is because they cannot imagine anything beyond this current life.
Change of the unknown is scarier than giving up the boredom of the familiar.
Further and further, I skip through the train lines not knowing what the numbers on the clocks mean. The city names flash, but why are there no numbers of their arrival?
At Ochanomizu, the orange Chuo line shows a splatter of blood on the tracks…
I outline the middle-schooler's face with my transparent hands, but do not touch her. My eyebrows touch one another.
I travel as far as my heart can go with theirs. They cannot remember me when I pass by, but I record an essence, these fleeting impressions of myself into each of their lives…
Suddenly, I am called to a girl who is singing. Her voice covers only a small part of the wide triangular park in Ikebukuro. Their are no children around the playground, which is right in the middle, because it is so cold today, but there is a homeless man in one bench to her right and there are people in suits, smoking and talking many feet away in front of her.
The wind is blowing, but I hear her small voice becoming stronger and stronger though her body shakes. She keeps on singing over and over,
"Gorgeous World,
this is my dream for you."
But inside of her, her nightmare is that when her body rebels against her again, she will die in a country far away from her family, not knowing she is dead, nor can she tell them the reason why.
Though she should head home, she can't seem to leave her place in the park.
In Shinagawa station, there is a business man walking quickly towards the wide gates of the central exit with its bright indoor shops, soon to go down the staircase towards the green Yamanote line, the single train that goes round and round Tokyo. He know that there is nothing to come home to but eating packaged curry for dinner and sleeping until 6am the next morning. This is not the job he wants to be in for the rest of his life, but the one that keeps him alive.
Yet, without knowing, there is someone who prays that he would return home safely everyday. He doesn't know that his neighbor is in love with him.
Today, out of a whim, he decides to go towards Shinjuku instead of Tokyo station to get on the Chuo line.
Pushing further, there is a couple walking through the North Side of Rainbow Bridge as the motorcycles and trucks deafeningly drive past them.
Though, they do not walk side by side. The young man walks within the gates safely and the older man strolls above him, watching his every move. Both are aware of the other and yet the do not say anything.
The young one has no ambitions for the future and the older one is too stubborn to give up his current lifestyle, to keep things as they are for as long as possible.
Neither one can let go. Neither one wants to.
In Iidabashi, through one high building overlooking the entrance of the Kanetsu Expressway, a man leaned his hands on the banister of the open window and looks down with a confused face as he sees the trains stop moving. He sweats in the Spring sun that is camouflaging Summer. But he shrugs his shoulders and turns around wondering instead if he will change sections or be left in his current one. But what did it matter since he'd be here for the rest of his life?
On the train platforms of the delayed train that crosses diameter of the city, I jump through each person's thoughts on my way back to the Diet Building.
The gap in human contact is getting bigger everyday: Time to come out of Mother's womb. Time to go to school. Time for exams. Time to get a company job. Time to get married. Time to transfer without questions. Time to retire. Time to die.
No time to rest. No time to think of inner ambitions. Just look for what is 'good enough'.
Where is the time to reflect? To want? To truly love life?
As I approach my human body again, a car passes by. A high school student looks at her compact in her car. She becomes obsessed over the mirror before her, asking if she's too fat even though in reality, she's underweight. The advertisements on the television tell her so as she struggles to study because if she doesn't, she can't get into a good school. And a name means everything here.
Those, in the end, with a brand-name anything is more significant than individuality.
It is not logical, but here it exists as it is.
And clearly, I show her a flash that she become the mother who takes a mother-and-baby class who cannot control her child, fearing it will hate her. And she already loathes herself for doing all the 'right things' like going to a good school, getting into a good company after graduating college and getting married after a few years.
What I see are not 'visions' for these people. They are just eventualities.
Visions are for those who are unpredictable, though Fate would love to control them herself.
Yet, with my hands out before me as I kneel quietly, patiently before the gods, my empty eyes cannot show what my mind absorbs. It cannot cry the concerns that people pray for everyday.
I am not a god and nor am I a powerful spirit either. I am just another person who is struggling to live.
You want to be free too.
The voice tells me what I cannot admit. I am so tired. I want to rest and I want to live that 'life' they say is so boring.
What is the point of being 'special' if you're trapped in here as well?
And all I can do is give the little strength I could to alter their nightly dreams so that they could smile for tomorrow…and to appreciate the things that I cannot do.
The door opens and everything, like a big 3-d screen where you see but cannot touch anything to make them feel real, disappears instantaneously. I concentrate on the boy who comes in, with the familiar scent of the wind that loves him as much as I speak to the Earth that cannot talk in human words.
My time marker has come. It must be late afternoon already.
"Saiki-dono."
He bows and I feel the impact of his warmth towards me with the small pressure of air that embraces me. I smile from deep inside. My heart momentarily lifts itself of its weights.
"Good afternoon, Hinoto-hime."
Nervously, he stands before me though I do not know why. But he takes a deep breath and says the same prompt everyday, "Is there anything I can do for you, Hinoto-hime?"
Stay here. You should go far away. I want to go out. I want you to bring something from the outside for me to smell and hear.
All these inner requests from the bubbles of my soul overflow into my head and I become inwardly embarrassed. Because, in the end, I know he is asking this because it is a part of his duty, the same obligation everyone in this city called Tokyo cannot ever escape from.
And yet, I know, I cannot protect this person who I love more than my sister, the person who came to me as a little boy, who admires me as the sightseer…and even more so as a person.
In the next second, I answer, "Please comb my hair."
Souhi and Hien give each other a puzzled look, I can feel them turn towards one another as the air swirls. But they do not move from their posts beside me.
I add in the next breath, "With your own fingers."
It is spoiled. It is selfish…
But if I will have one wish before the world ends, it will be this.
Without another word, you nod your head and go to my left side. Taking off the decorations of my hair, you caress the tips with your fingers, smoothening out ever tangle meticulously. These fingers are hot and full of life. They hold a good energy that revives me of all the things that pollute my spirit everyday.
I close my eyelids and remain seated as the beautiful doll that I've always been. My whole body is already gone, but my I can still feel my heart.
Straight into that direction, I can feel you, from your fingers.
And it makes me want to cry though I cannot allow myself to.
"When I was a child, my sister did this for me because I was afraid to go to sleep."
These moments of life that live on for eternity inside of you cannot ever be erased. The beauty of what you cannot have only transforms from an image into 'life' itself when you break yourself from the fear of being rejected from what you want so badly.
I realized when you always asked me your simple questions each day, I could still have them touch me. Because of that, at this moment, each strand makes my heart bleed, dripping quietly and invisibly away.
I didn't let anyone touch me voluntarily but even if I have always known your life was made to save mine, I did not take that for granted, Saiki-dono.
You take my single request so seriously. Combing thoroughly, much time goes by until you make it to the crown of my head.
"Is it all right to comb until here?"
"Of course."
Softly and quivering a bit, the nails of your fingers touch my scalp as you smooth out my hair and pat it into place. It feels like you are an extension of myself, that we are pieces of the same soul.
If I am water, you are air, like the blue Earth we live upon.
Through you, I have always been able to understand this life.
"Please tell me a story. You have been very quiet today."
"I don't want to hurt you if I get distracted by talking to you."
"Let it hurt."
"But…"
"I don't know what that feels like, you know."
He stops momentarily.
"Should I be the one to do so? Even by accident? I don't want to harm you in any way."
"Will you now start to treat me like everyone else has?"
"No."
The sudden force in his voice startles him and even I'm surprised. His tranquil nature ripples before me. How gentle the wind is and yet with what force it can break itself into pieces just out of the intense desire to 'be'.
Then, he starts to tell me about the what happened at school, and how crowded the train was because of the delay when there was a suicide but luckily he got on the train even though it abruptly stopped in between all the stations.
His voice echoes everywhere it can touch.
I listen patiently. I listen earnestly. It gives me a sense of normalcy. It reminds me of the time before I came here to stay, when I still could feel the seasons and the brushes of people by just sitting outside though I couldn't be near them.
As he combs my hair, each tingle proves to me that I am still alive in here.
When he kneels before me, he fixes my bangs. Lifting them a bit off my forehead, he stops and I hear Souhi gasp. Hien holds her breath.
Like a dried up fountain that suddenly has a small stream of water fall, I immediately smell a mix of three kinds of saltwater flowing down to the sleek floor.
You can still do something. You know you can. Freedom is not selfish, it is the strength to fight something you absolutely need in order to live.
Fate can be changed if you do it for another's sake!
Because of their nature and the way they've been trained to treat me, I had to make the first attempt to talk though for the first time in my life, I am very, very afraid of the answer they would give me.
"Is there something wrong? Souhi? Hien? Saiki-dono?"
"Hinoto-hime…" Souhi tries to open her mouth but she can't say anything further than my name.
As always, the one to break the glass of what others don't even think of doing
Without saying anything that would intensify the frustrations I had for not being able to do things as others on the surface of this city could, he says with a bright grin in his voice while controlling the quivering, "Your smile makes you even look younger, Hinoto-hime."
I couldn't talk.
Could…could I do that?
Is this your true wish, Saiki-dono or is it mine? But a miracle comes with a heavy price!
I almost feel Time itself flowing faster.
He tells me nothing more. Souhi and Hien take turns to go out for a minute or two. But he stays with me until he finishes his duty.
When he put the last ornament into place, he bows before me. "Good night, Hinoto-hime. I will come again at the same time tomorrow."
"Before you leave, come closer. Please put your eyes before my nose."
"I…" But he closes his mouth and leans forward.
Ah…so this is what salt smells like.
"Put your each of your eyes against my lips."
"Yes, Hinoto-hime."
He bends his head down further for his eyelashes to touch my lips. Even though I feel nothing on my lips, a burst of sorrow rushes through me. And an intense feeling of liberation comes rushing against it at the same time.
It is then that the one who is to come to take him away from me is heading closer and closer towards us.
As Saiki-dono gets up to leave, the room begins to shake in small waves.
No no no no no no!
"I wanted to tell you that I looked forward to seeing you everyday, Daisuke."
"Hime?" As he turns around, the other named Kamui has just arrived, waiting in his web spun above us.
Quietly, I send him off for the last time as he impatiently leaves to investigate what is going on.
Though my heart is braking into as many strands as there are on my head and my mind finally splits itself open into selfish human and selfless seer,
I won't close my eyes, Saiki-dono.
You are my wings. My freedom.
Owari.
--
5/31/2008 10:20:00 AM – LA
6/1/08 2:20AM - Tokyo