Disclaimer: I do not own X. Clamp does. Sue me not.
Many thanks to my beta, Cait-hime-sama.
Life in Stills
Kamui crept into the Monou estate at twilight, like the shadows spreading on the corridor's smooth wooden floor as the sun set.
His steps were soft and silent, short and well measured, like a thief's. He walked not so much out of his fear of being discovered; the knowledge of just how and why the house was abandoned had been his bane and nightmare for too long now. He did it and he didn't know why. Perhaps he was afraid of spirits in the house which might be disturbed by his presence and the target of his invasion.
When Kamui looked back on it he wondered what type of spirits he thought he might find there. He shuddered. An image of Saya, her body transparent like a TV made phantom, standing in the middle of the living room awaiting him, perhaps?
There was no such thing when Kamui entered the house neighboring the deserted and defiled Togakushi shrine; he could proceed.
This was not the first raid Kamui performed on his best friends' former estate; Kamui had been here before on two occasions. The first was to salvage Kotori's belongings from her room. The second was to do the same for Fuma's.
Both incursions were followed by a sleepless night of crying while shuffling through the siblings' belongings. Fuma's unwashed basketball uniforms were sniffed thoroughly before they were soaked by Kamui's tears. Kotori's favorite blue dog plushy was embraced tightly to Kamui's narrow, skinny, painful chest, while the youth soaked the toy's head with agony's tears.
The idea for this invasion came to Kamui during chemistry class, as the teacher gave them a lecture on the invention of the camera and the chemical processes which were discovered and developed to perform the creation of a photograph.
"Photographs!" Kamui heard himself say out loud just when the teacher pulled the home-brewed photograph out of the box used as a dark room. It's needless to say what a joke Kamui made of himself by doing that. It is also needless to say how Kamui ignored the giggles and cheers from his schoolmates; he had better things to think about at the moment.
And so, that very evening, Kamui crept into the Monou estate via the large sliding door opening to the house's living room, with a heap of folded cardboard boxes he planned to fill with whatever he'd find in the house.
Before he unfolds the boxes and starts filling, Kamui realized he needs to find what he's here for in the first place.
Where would the Monou's hide their family photos?
Kamui tried the large chest of drawers standing between the television set and a large glass-fronted display cabinet.
Here he found a thick album in a dark red demy-leather box. The album was made of the same materials as the box and contained black smooth pages onto which photographs were plastered using plastic stickers with corners attached to them to hold the pictures in place. The stickers were old and, as Kamui tired leafing through the album, came off along with the pictures.
Making a note to himself to be more careful with such relics, Kamui gently picked up any photograph that slipped off the album onto the floor or into the drawer in which the album was found, placed the album inside its box and the box inside the first cardboard box he unfolded.
Recalling the photos he saw in the first found album, Kamui realized there might not be one family album but a few of them and that his searches were not over yet.
When he found the second album this theory was proved right. When they moved into this house or even before that, when they were just married, Saya and Kyogo brought into their new family home their own respective albums filled with the photographs they took in their bachelor days.
Assuming that the couple showed this system, or the gist of it, to their children, Kamui presumed that Fuma and Kotori might have their own albums as well as Saya's and the larger family album.
The second album was found in the glass fronted cabinet on the other side of the television. This cabinet was split in half: the upper half containing a carefully placed collection of china miniatures, souvenirs from various reserves and shrines the family visited, a photograph of Kotori on her first day in school (which Kamui carefully added to his collection) and a photograph of young Fuma amidst a bunch of boys his age dressed in a basketball team's uniform and looking quite happy about something (this too, Kamui added to the collection).
The lower half was a jumbled mess of papers, boxes and books gathering dust through the crack between the cabinet's glass doors. Kamui had to literally dig through the great cluster of dusty, yellowing things before he found the second album.
This album was slightly thinner than the first one, but longer. Its spiral back was made of fake gold which began flaking off as Kamui touched it. The cover was thick cardboard coated by embroidery presenting a picture of some western pastoral countryside. The embroidered sky was imbedded with golden strings so that, as Kamui opened and closed the cover, hundreds of tiny stars glittered in what appears to be a sunny day's sky.
This album too, was in a deteriorating shape. This one's pages were also blank, but once were coated by a layer of diagonal glue stripes which pinned the photos onto it. Once the pictures were placed, a page of thin plastic attached to the page would be placed, sticking to the glue on the gaps between one photo and the other and so protect the picturesfrom any harm. Years passed since this kitschy album was produced and by now the glue began weakening, letting many of the images placed onto it go.
Once again, Kamui carefully collected fallen photos, returned them to the album and placed it in the box along with the red album.
Kamui was about to turn his back on the cabinet and head for Kotori and Fuma's rooms when a thought came to him: the cabinet might contain more than just one album, after all, it was situated in the living room, which was the family's common space.
Digging through more clattered mess on the same shelf where Kamui found the first album, Kamui came across three more albums.
The first was a thin white album on which's cover the following headline was written in silver, "Our Firstborn Child," along with a tacky silver drawing of a stork holding a folded fabric bag containing a chubby, happy, suspiciously western looking baby.
The second album was equally thin, but, unlike its brother, was dyed in the most hideous hue of pink. The golden fonts on this one's cover read, "Our Little Baby Girl," along with golden drawings of toy hairbrushes, a cute dress, a pair of ballet shoes and a neatly knotted ribbon.
The third album was twice as fat as the first album and, compared to the "Our Little Baby Girl" book, was chastely decorated. This one's cover was merely a huge full-page photo of two children, one blond and the other ginger, unsuccessfully forging a truly happy grin, one with his arms around a pampered looking dog and the other holding a camera as if she had just finished taking a picture. The children lay on their tummies on the other side of a small grass mound overlooking a rural green countryside decorating the children's background. The sky above them was spotless blue.
Kamui fought the bubbling feeling of disgust and faint hate towards the cheerful fake picture and placed all three albums in the second box he unfolded.
He dug in the cabinet for more albums and found none, opened the other drawers in the chest he did not get to open yet after finding the first album and only when he was sure there was nothing more here did he turn to the siblings' rooms.
Kotori's room remained in basically the same condition as it was when Kamui left it as a child. The only furniture added was a larger, more mature work table and a larger bed. During his first raid on the house, Kamui emptied the room's closet, the table, the bed and the walls from everything which once belonged to the girl. He did not dare to look into the small white cabinet by the girl's bed where he knew she kept her treasures, during the first raid he feared he might find something which would re-open the wound.
Sighing, Kamui kneeled before the cabinet and stared at it. The last memory he had of this cabinet was of Kotori as a little girl kneeling by it. Back then she was a small girl and the cabinet looked like a medium sized closet; now, when Kamui was roughly her mature size, it seemed small and trivial.
The lacquer covered white doors were spotted by various stickers its owner decorated it with. There were glittering stickers and colorful stickers. Cute chibi faces of animals, little "get better soon!", "good luck!" and "happy birthday!" labels, stickers in the shape of all sorts of Disney creatures.
The pattern of one type of sticker Kamui knew by heart because he helped put it there. It was a series of small stickers in the shape of the solar system's planets (moons and asteroid belts included).
Kamui reached out and touched Venus. Then his finger slid down mindlessly and reached Mars.
Realizing what a foolish waste of time this was, Kamui quickly opened the cabinet's doors and searched for an album.
Amidst a heap of girlie comic books, cheap make-up items, a small fabric bag containing tampons and pads, a couple of worn bras which Kamui threw out of his way as quickly as he could, and various western fashion and glamour magazines, Kamui found what he wanted. The album was long and wide and so stuffed with pictures it seemed to be about to burst. The cover was pure white (which took Kamui by surprise when he remembered Kotori's 'typically girly' taste) save for a small picture of a cartoon small mammal of an obscure species set inside a martini glass, enjoying a drink while reading a book.
Kamui placed the album under his arm once he dug through the rest of Kotori's neglected belongings and left the room towards Fuma's. He'll take the remaining relics in another invasion, right now the memories coming from the pictures combined with the memories of these small intimate things might prove to be too much for him.
Fuma's room was completely emptied the second time Kamui invaded the house and so, as he walked into the bigger of the two rooms, Kamui had very little hope of finding any albums at all.
He walked around the room, hands on his hips, and chewed on his lower lip nervously. Scanning the room for anything he might have missed the first time he came in here since the house was deserted; Kamui suddenly noticed something sticking out from under Fuma's bed. It was very hard to spot and needed only the very curious, very sensitive eye of someone as desperate as Kamui was.
Kneeling by the bed immediately, Kamui stuck his hand under the bed and found that he was touching a small pile of book-like things about the length of the bed and nearly the width of his arm. Excited, Kamui squirmed under the bed and began pushing out everything under it with wide sweeps of his arm as if he was swimming through particularly stormy waters. When there was nothing left under the bed, Kamui quickly squirmed out and kneeled on the other side of the jumble he pulled out.
The pile contained a clutter of dusty, cobweb covered items on which Kamui blew and wiped with the corner of the blanket spread on the bed to clean.
There was an old punctured basketball, so over-used that its tiny plastic bumps were worn out at various large patches and its once vibrant orange became faded into a dull yellowish color.
Kamui ran his hand over the larger of the bald patches and imagined its size to be the size of Fuma's palm.
There was an amazing collection of filthy unwashed clothes in the pile from scattered, mismatched socks to shirts, boxers and even pants. All were absolutely reeking with unbearable stench and covered by spots of mould and large balls of dust and cobwebs.
Kamui was overcome by the horrid smell and, grabbing the blanket once more, picked the items up and cast them to the other side of the room. Once that was finished and he took enough deep breaths to clear his airways from the unpleasant smell, Kamui stopped to wonder how on earth Fuma could not only live in a room containing such a revolting clutter, but sleep above it every night!
When that was done, Kamui turned his attention to the pile of books which comprised about two thirds of the pile. He wiped the books' covers and discovered a small treasure of children's books. It was like a lightning bolt to his mind as he scanned the books and recollected far away days when these would be read to him and the Monou children by his mother or Saya.
Fearing a wave of depression, Kamui quickly gathered the books in a pile and pushed them back under the bed, he'll collect them when he comes here to take Kotori's last belongings.
The other books in the pile were old textbooks which bore no interest to Kamui. He shoved them carelessly under the bed.
The last thing left from the stash under the bed was a shoebox. Kamui shrugged and reached out for it. It must be a pair of Fuma' most beloved pair of shoes, or maybe his first pair of basketball shoes, who knows.
The sight of a rather over-developed blond in a petty excuse for a nurse's uniform, sitting on an examination table with her legs opened greeted Kamui when he opened the box. He blinked at the woman which hung glazed, half-seductive eyes at him.
It was porn. A box full of porn. A box full of porn full of naked women.
Kamui shut the box violently and flung it so hard across the room that it crushed into the wall with a powerful bang and landed, its content scattered on the floor, leaving a deep crater of damaged plaster in the wall.
Kamui shot to his feet, shaking with such blind rage, such deep insult, as if he found a box full of nude pictures of himself in there and not an average Japanese boy's porn collection.
The rage itself was unclear to Kamui as to its source, though at the time he couldn't care less about such trivial matters. Unaware of his actions, Kamui kicked one of the bed's legs so hard he heard the thick strong wood crack and snap under his abusive foot.
Realizing he was about to damage Fuma's property, Kamui stopped kicking and stood still, running his fingers through his hair in a desperate attempt to get a grip on himself.
He shot a withering glare at the crushed pile of moral filth and was about to storm out of the room after slamming its door shut powerfully enough to unhinge it when something caught his eye: an album.
The album lay open on its belly, pages splayed sideways like a man who had fallen face first onto the ground, helpless and exposed. It had a lock on it, which was ripped out by the sheer force of Kamui's blow. It had a simple blank dark green cover and looked rather thick.
Kamui hurried over to the album's side and, ignoring whatever magazines and manga booklets scattered around it, picked it carefully off the floor. He walked back to the bed where he placed Kotori's album and took it as well before he exited the room back to the house's living room where the rest of his boxes were.
Placing the two newly found albums in a box of their own, Kamui quickly collected his treasures and exited the house as smoothly and as sneakily as he had entered.
No one was watching him while inside the house, nor when he snuck to it, and neither when he snuck out. No Seals followed him to make sure he was alright and no Harbinger spied on him to attack him in his most venerable territory. The forces of The Battle somehow fathomed the importance of his mission and let him do as he wished.
Kamui walked casually into his dorm's house, hoping that his nonchalant appearance would not attract the house's other inhabitants' attention.
Sorata was in the kitchen cooking. He hollered a "Hey Kamui! Good to see you come back; you're here just in time for dinner."
"Uh….okay…"
Sorata poked his head out of the kitchen, its brow covered by a thin film of sweat, "I'm making noodles and fried vegetables Thai style, should be a blast!"
The thin torrent of white smoke coming out of the kitchen confirmed that, indeed, something was heavily cooking or just about to burn.
Kamui made a note about that and sent Sorata screaming back into the kitchen, cursing himself for not paying attention to the food in the wok.
Arashi was in the living room, sitting on the floor by the table on which her homework was fanned out. She looked too concentrated in her task to be disturbed.
Yuzuriha was out in the back yard, in the midst of a particularly wild game of fetch with Inuki. Kamui could hear her shrills even through the thick bulletproof glass of the living room's sliding doors which lead to the backyard.
And so, hardly noticed and perfectly undisturbed, Kamui climbed to his bedroom and closed the door after him.
He placed the boxes before him on the floor and sat on the bed, quickly slipping out of his school uniform and into a more casual pair of loose pants and a Clamp Campus Pandas baseball team T-shirt.
He folded his legs under him and opened the first box, fishing out the dark red album and placing it before him on the bed.
Sorata's hollar pierced the soft, thick, almost respectful silence Kamui had gathered in his room for the occasion. Dinner was ready.
Kamui sighed, placed the album back in its box, shut the lid and pushed it and the other two boxes under his bed before putting his slippers on and shuffling downstairs.
He'll lock himself in his room later to explore the albums.
The red album: Kyogo
The first black pages in the red album were dotted by small black and white pictures of boys in school uniforms.
Five boys, sometimes only in pairs, threesomes or amongst other students, were the theme of these pictures. The boys grew before Kamui's eyes as he scanned the pictures and changed uniforms from elementary school sailor suits to high school strict army styled black jackets and pants.
The young Kyogo, the obvious owner of the album and the artist behind the pictures, was mostly seen with his arm around a friend and smiling happily, if not somewhat sheepishly. The slightly embarrassed smile was so familiar to Kamui from his knowledge of the man that seeing it on the face of such a young man almost startled him.
He always saw Kyogo as a somewhat aloof large man who tried his best not to seem as warm, loving and parental as he really was for the sake of his macho status of household leader.
Kyogo's uniforms were always slightly crumpled, stained here and there, missing a button or torn at the edges. Kamui wondered what brought about those features; was Kyogo an adventurous brat? Was he an out of control rascal? Was he a punk who got into fights every day?
His four friends included a lean and tall (even taller than Kyogo) boy with short cropped hair who always held a sports item, no matter what age he was caught in. The items were a soccer ball, a cricket ball, a shinai or a bogu.
The second was a boy about Kyogo's height (only until junior high school when Kyogo outgrew him by half a head or so) with slightly curly hair who constantly wore sunglasses of various wild designs. In pictures of social gatherings or parties, was always dressed by the time's latest fashion, even if it looked absolutely ridiculous. Kamui never saw a man wear authentic silk bell-bottoms and a matching silk jacket and it amused him to no end.
The third friend was a chubby bespectacled boy who always looked apologetic, cringing and often hunched. The boys around him were always with an arm around him or a hand on his shoulder; as if to ease him out of his embarrassment. The boy wasn't very handsome, bordering on ugly, and Kamui had to feel great respect for the group of beautiful young able men for insisting on keeping this dorky boy with them despite his obvious 'un-cool' personality.
The fourth friend was a lithe youth with fair long hair and rather feminine features. He was always with his back straight proudly, his arms folded on his chest, with a cheeky angle to his stance or a half seductive pout mostly seen on female fashion models. A particular picture from elementary school portrayed this boy in the girls' uniform, standing amongst rose bushes, holding one of the flowers dramatically, with his friends in a circle around him pretending they were his enthusiastic suitors.
During high school, this boy was more seen as the fashion aware friend and sporting a Ziggy Stardust hairdo (which didn't really suit him, but got the message through).
The group was mostly seen together playing all sorts of amusing scenes like the 'beautiful maiden and suitors' one and each scene was so well played both in outfits and in gestures that Kamui wondered if Kyogo attended his school's various drama clubs.
The boys leaned on motorcycles by a pub, sunglasses and snazzy leather coats covered (the fair-haired boy was wearing a tiny mini-skirt and clung to Kyogo like a girlfriend), they pretended to be tough young adults when they were actually around the age of fourteen or fifteen (Kamui could only estimate by their appearance).
They clung to a school fence, making sad or angry faces, as if imprisoned in the institution.
They were holding the tall sportive friend in the air, pretending he won a big competition's prize.
They clung to each other happily when drabbed in their high school graduation robes. Their smiles were wonderful. Their eyes were afire with excitement at this end of their time in the education system. Their fingers, clutching at each other's shoulders, arms and backs were desperate. They did not want to break up.
The following two pages contained pictures of the four friends in their new life beyond the education system:
The fashionable friend had two pictures; one of him sitting on a stool in the street, playing a guitar for money. The second in Self Defense Force uniform, holding a shovel and digging snow away from a main road with a bunch of his friends, looking happy, complete and well-shaven for the first time since he could grow hairs on his face.
The tall friend was seen holding a real sports medal, standing on the 'number one' cube with two other athletes at his sides. The symbol of the international Olympic Games blared at the distance in the picture and made Kamui whistle with awe at how far this friend got.
A picture of a geisha, with a fancy signature at the left bottom, made Kamui blink. He brought the album closer and recognized none other than the fair-haired friend. He had become a geisha! Perhaps a geisha impersonator? No, an inscription on the back of this picture told Kamui that the Kuzuki Kodu-sama was a lead actor in one of Japan's most famous kabuki theaters. That too, made Kamui whistle with awe.
Kamui scanned the beautiful man's face once more and had to wonder why he looked familiar…something about the long flowing bright hair and the soft feminine features…
The chubby awkward friend was standing outside a large famous court beside a famous actress (even Kamui recognized her, though he never paid much attention to movie and music celebrities in his life), both of them absolutely mobbed by reporters with cameras and microphones. This picture was taken out of a newspaper and beneath it was text telling of the actress' long bloody lawsuit against her former husband who allegedly cheated on her and stole her money during their short marriage. The headline under the picture described Kyogo's plump friend as the actress' 'famous celebrity lawyer'.
Once again, Kamui was struck with admiration.
Beyond the two sheets were pages upon pages of nature pictures. Kamui flipped through the album frowning. So many pictures of flowers, waterfalls, and trees in flaming fall hues, rolling hills and dangerous cliffs, all so perfectly positioned and clear; the collection was amazing.
Kyogo took these pictures? Kamui couldn't believe it. Kyogo was the strict, clumsy and quiet priest, he couldn't have been hiding a true artist's soul deep under those thick layers of traditional Japanese manhood, could he?
The last pages in the album had only one picture each. The first page had a picture of a tattered, shaky shrine. Kamui had to scrutinize the wreck for a long while before he recognized that this was Togakushi shrine!
Kyogo stood before the shrine in his priest robes, his arms at his sides strictly and with a blank expression. His clothes were mucky, paint stains sprayed on his palms and cheeks, a broom in his left hand.
Something in the tired wrinkles in the bags under Kyogo's eyes told Kamui the man was not all that happy to be here.
The second page contained a picture of a very young Saya (so young Kamui was absolutely sure she was in middle school) hugged from behind by a very awkward, but very, very happy Kyogo.
Kyogo was absolutely beaming, though his palms closed on Saya's frail shoulders seemed timid. The angle of Saya's eyebrows was apologetic and unsure, the tiny curve of a smile at the edge of her half-parted full lips was fake.
Kamui shuddered and closed the album. Aunty Saya was unhappy in her marriage, too young to enter such an obligation and not be damaged by it. Uncle Kyogo was mismatched to his occupation and was left, lonely and muse-less in a fatally ungrateful role destiny forced on him.
Everything Kamui thought he knew of the Monou's was starting to crumble and collapse before his eyes.
What will the next few albums show him?
The white album with the drunken rodent; Kotori
The first third of Kotori's album was almost completely filled with pictures containing young Kamui. He had to wonder how a small girl, as Kamui remembered her before they parted, could have gathered such a collection. The answer came when Kamui took one of the pictures out of its plastic pocket on the white pages to check the inscription behind it. The handwriting was Kyogo's. Apparently, Kotori raided the family album to get all these pictures.
Kamui flipped through the pages loaded with his young images, uncomfortable and slightly angry. He didn't know why it annoyed him that Kotori was so obviously obsessed with him, but he didn't try to fight it.
He knew he once asked if he could be her bride, but that thought couldn't have lingered on in her mind so powerfully, could it?
Flipping past at least fifteen pages, Kamui finally found pictures that weren't his. These pictures were almost the complete female version of Kotori's father's pictures. Five good friends together from elementary school to high school, same happy faces, same archetypes of youths, same poses.
Kotori had the exact same slightly awkward smile as her father's, her postures a copy of her father's. Kamui never noticed how much she resembled Kyogo!
The only change in the group pictures were those of scenes. The girls obviously had a far more elaborate creative imagination than Kyogo's generation's boys.
These girls placed themselves on a carpet of shoujo manga and fashion magazines and laughed while taking the picture. They portrayed a scene from a famous ancient play to the tiniest detail, costumes included. They pretended each was a model or a famous actress while the rest played photographers, fans and reporters, a different girl playing the celebrity in each photo. They played scenes of various western fairy tales and showed a keen talent for acting.
Kotori was never an evil character and when she was the celebrity bombarded by fans she was holding a large wicker basket with a banner reading "charity" hung on it, her face that of a Christian saint.
Time ran out on the cheerful group before Kotori had the chance to gather the pictures of her friends in their adult life.
Flipping past the last page of happy girls in various poses, Kamui found the last third of the album was filled with pictures of Fuma. He was alarmed when, seconds after he stared at the first picture, the page was stained by a single tear.
He wiped at his eyes and studied the stills.
Fuma as a young boy holding a blurry report card, beaming so happily he almost looked crazy.
Fuma with a kitchen apron and a fancy chef hat, holding a dirty spatula, standing in the middle of a chaotic kitchen with Saya in the background covering her eyes desperately (Kamui had to laugh, though he was crying so hard he was shaking).
Fuma with his hands on his hips, a basketball tucked under his left arm, trying to look big and manly, dressed in a basketball uniform.
Fuma standing by a wall with height measurements marked here and there beneath the new line at the tip of his head, a much surprised Kyogo at his side marking his son's latest new record in the Monou family.
Fuma in a high school uniform, holding a new school bag, his father standing awkwardly by him with a proud smile.
Fuma and his new basketball uniform, Fuma surrounded by his teammates, Fuma carried on the hands of his teammates, holding the high school's first trophy.
Kamui shut the album, placing it shakily on the bed beside him. He reached for the pack of paper tissues, yanking a large batch violently. He blew his nose, lingering with the open soft handkerchief covering his face. He cried into the tissue, rocking back and forth a bit.
He threw himself backwards on the mattress and cried some more, allowing himself a desperate whimper from time to time.
Lost time, lost memories, lost souls. Fuma and Kotori, where are they now?
What use was it to look at these pictures, anyway? Why did he do it to himself! How will this help him in anything but to make him even sadder?
His crying calmer now, Kamui wiped his face and rolled off his bed. He walked to the large window in his room, pushed the fancy decorated glass doors and opened the window widely. The nearing frowning autumn began sending chilly tendrils into the carefree summer air. Soon he will have to go and purchase a set of winter uniforms from the Clamp Campus store. The cool air helped calm Kamui's burning face. The flush in his cheeks clashed with the cold breeze.
After a few minutes of taking deep breaths filled with cool refreshing air, Kamui felt strong enough to face the white album again.
He opened it on its first page. He scrutinized the pictures of the younger him.
Good god, he was so small once upon a time! Not that he's so big now, but goodness, he was tiny back then! He had a small face with huge eyes, a small thin body and babyish hands. Even then it was difficult to find clothes that would fit him.
He was always surrounded by Kotori and Fuma, who either had an arm around him or hugged him. He was always beaming so brightly it looked like a different Kamui and Kotori would always poke her tongue out.
One picture showed the three children sitting in a blooming field of daisies, crowns of flowers decorating their heads, flowers tucked into their belts, behind their ears and set into chains around their necks. Kotori looked like a perfect angel with her shiny wavy hair, her flowery crown and the bright white stylish dress she wore. Fuma looked like he was going to sneeze (he was more laden with flowers than the other two). Kamui looked like a little girl.
God damn it, he looked like a little girl! He did!
As if to prove it even more, the picture under the flower picture was of him wearing one of Kotori's dresses (Kamui remembered it clearly, how he loved the soft bright violet of the small gown and how it's skirt flared in the wind), his tiny feet lost inside Saya's high heeled shoes (or was it his mother's shoes? Kamui couldn't remember) and trying desperately to keep the wide brimmed straw hat (Saya's, for sure) from covering half his face.
Kotori, sitting beside him, was obviously applauding, bellowing in laughter by the expression on her face and kicking the ground with her feet.
Fuma, who was already wearing his elementary school uniform, placed his hand on Kamui's back and smiled at the camera serenely. His expression puzzled Kamui; it looked happy, but not childishly happy like he usually seemed in other pictures from the time. He seemed more mature picture containing Saya caught Kamui's attention. He, Kotori and Fuma were clinging to each other happily while Saya's arms surrounded them in a soft hug.
Saya laid her head sideways on her older child's head, her chin touching Kamui's head and looking directly at the camera. Her eyes were so soft and glowing they were powerful. With her long flowing hair, her slightly frilly dress sleeves and that powerful expression, she looked like a mighty fairy queen protecting her children.
Kotori, slightly leaning into the niche of her mother's shoulder, wrapped her arms around Kamui's chest, not poking her tongue out for the first time in the collection. Fuma, his arms around Kamui's waist, his chin leaning into his neck, had the same powerful eyes as his mother's.
Kamui wiped at his tearful eyes and flipped the page shakily.
The next page didn't help his heart with its longing ache.
The first picture was of the big dining table in the Monou's living room around which the family gathered with Kamui and his mother as company. Everyone was smiling, raising their glasses happily. The adults held saki glasses, the children held wine glasses filled with apple juice (Kamui remembered it to be apple juice because he remembered begging Saya to let him drink real saki). The table was absolutely covered by dishes, some of which Kamui recognized as his mother's making. He hardly remembered when this picture was taken nor the special occasion the banquet celebrated.
The second picture was taken during a summer festival with everyone dressed in yukatas and holding paper lanterns. Fuma held two chocolate covered bananas, Kotori held a plastic bag with a prize fish, Kamui held onto both the children's sleeves. The night behind them was dotted by carnival lights, shiny food stands, crowded by celebrators, and the sky was filled with stars.
The way the adults of the family stood made Kamui ponder.
First to the left stood Kyogo who, for the first time, didn't look half as awkward as he usually did. He looked quite content and mature, his eyes focused and clear.
Saya stood to his right, her hand holding her husband's, which was almost hidden by her children's heads. Her face held that mystical glow of female strength, her sweet smile kept a secret.
Last on the right stood his mother, her arm possessively hooked around Saya's waist. Her hair was tied back uncharacteristically, her head leaning against Saya's. She was wearing a man's yukata. Kyogo's palm was just slightly holding her shoulder.
Kamui blinked. What's going on? Something's there, screaming at him from that piece of picture, but what?
The third picture was of him and his mother. He was tightly wrapped by his mother's arms and didn't look half as uncomfortable as he usually feels when someone tries to hug him so tightly.
He loved his mother's hugs; they were deep and warm and satisfying, she was the only person he allowed to hug him without quickly shaking it off.
The young him in the picture was smiling with an open mouth, a lollypop stick poking out of the corner of his mouth. They were reaching out to the camera, either throwing something onto it or trying to touch it.
The blank blue background and the quality of the photo told Kamui that this was a studio picture. He didn't remember taking it though, when he tried hard, he could vaguely remember the studio and its strange flamboyant artist.
Kamui was so upset by this piece of perfection robbed of him by destiny that he almost shut the album to move to the next one. The photo under the last one caught his eye.
It was in an onsen Kamui clearly remembered going to. He remembered everything about that trip, which started happy and noisy with laughter and joy and ended loaded with arguments.
The adults of the two families were fighting behind the thin wooden walls of the rooms they rented, muffled enough to keep their children from finding out what caused the fun trip to flip into such an angry atmosphere.
Kamui remembered recognizing his mother's voice in decibels he never knew she could reach, loaded with such anger. He remembered Kyogo's voice reaching equal new powers.
He remembered hardly hearing Saya and when he did, noting her voice was always leveled and calm though its donation meant she was begging.
He remembered how much the long fight made Kotori cry and how hard he and Fuma had to work to comfort her.
Eventfully the three children had had enough of their parents' shouts and decided to leave their room on an adventure. The onsen was located in the middle of a mountain forest, rich with wildlife and flowers to cheer Kotori up.
They got lost in the woods and only came back to their room when the forest rangers found them, dirty, wet, hungry and hysterical.
Their parents were still arguing when they came back, only now they were shooting accusations at each other for how they could have let the kids run away (with Tohru and Kyogo the main participants again). As soon as their parents laid their eyes on their retrieved children, all anger, resentment and heat melted away, making way for grateful tears and happy hugs.
The adults never fought after that, but Kamui remembered how something in the air between the two families soured. Three weeks following that picture Saya died and the Shiro family moved to Okinawa.
The picture capturing the trip before its great decent into domestic arguments portrayed Kamui, Kotori and Fuma up to their noses in steamy bubbling water while the mothers of the group leaned back on the rocks surrounding the small pool. Saya looked pale and weary (Kamui remembered how she fainted shortly after entering the pool) and his mother looked beyond the picture, to its maker, with a look of slight suspicion and obvious discontent.
Thinking back on the day's event, Kamui wondered why Kotori was the one who held this historical picture. She ransacked the Monou family album, but she didn't just pick any pictures, she picked specific ones. Somehow, as he scanned these pictures chosen by the girl he realized he didn't really know, Kamui realized that Kotori knew more than he or her brother would ever understand.
Kamui wished to have Kotori by him on the bed, to sit down to a nice cup of tea and talk this shrouded family mystery over with.
His mind occupied with thoughts, Kamui let the slippery plastic covered album slip off his legs and land on the mattress, shut.
When he awoke from his contemplations, Kamui placed the white album gently back in the box from which he pulled it and grabbed the album next to it.
The simple dark green album; Fuma
Kamui pulled Fuma's album out of its box with a head too occupied with other thoughts to really mind what he was doing. He placed it lazily on his folded legs, fumbling with the broken lock with his mind still watching his mother's suspicious glare at the photographing Kyogo.
Something crashed behind his room's door and yanked Kamui's thoughts back to modern times. The crash was a metallic one and a short, accusing shrill belonging to Yuzuriha came almost immediately after it. Sorata's muffled apologies cut short by Yuzuriha's still angry rebukes made Kamui smile unintentionally, even though he knew not the cause of the short drama scene played outside his door.
He placed the ignored album by the bed and walked off to the door.
Yuzuriha had asked Sorata to help her carry a drum set to her room and Sorata, having heard Arashi speaking on the phone a floor below and grew suspicious; let his fingers slip from their grip on one of the bigger drums.
Kamui examined the jumbled drum set with soaring eyebrows while Yuzuriha yanked drum by drum, stick by stick, half heartedly glaring at Sorata and ignoring Kamui completely.
"Yuzuriha-san? Since when do you play the drums?"
The inugami mistress turned disoriented eyes to Kamui, "Eh? Oh…the music teacher said I should try playing them, said I have the right attitude for it."
"Hmmm…."
"It's a good thing he didn't tell you to play a piano huh?" Sorata tried easing the anger out of Yuzuriha's frown and failed.
"….You won't make too much noise with them, will you?" Kamui hung hopeful eyes at the girl.
Choosing this moment to vanish into her room with an armful of drums, Yuzuriha avoided answering the fatal question.
"Yuzuriha-san...?"
"She's going to make a hell of a noise and you know it, why bother asking?" Sorata sighed.
"I don't know…I don't know anything anymore…." Choosing this moment to vanish into his room, Kamui avoided the worried look and questions from the monk.
He closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock before Sorata would have the chance to use his body's weight and prevent him from shutting himself in.
The dark green album lay on his bed, solemn like moss on an ancient grave in deep winter. Kamui collapsed on the bed, folding his legs under him, hands on his knees, staring at the book.
Kotori's book proved to be a Pandora's Box, what will the other sibling's album hold in store for him?
He reached for the album and dragged it to his lap by its corner, trying to stall its opening as much as he could.
The first page held a picture of a younger him, smiling brightly, looking straight at and reaching out to touch the older him past the thick layer of coating, modern air and destiny's scars. This version of him looked familiar, where did he see it before?
His studio picture with his mother! This was half of it, cut crudely by Fuma, or by Kotori, by someone. Kamui remembered something suddenly; there were three copies of the studio picture. One for Saya, one for his mother and one, framed, sitting atop the small table by the television in the Monou living room, amidst the pictures Kamui took from the glass-fronted cabinet.
Someone had removed this picture and cut it up to place it in this album. Was it Fuma? Kamui didn't know. The memory of that argument filled noon at the onsen made everything Kamui thought he knew unclear.
Fuma chose his picture to decorate the first page of his album. Kamui's heart twitched painfully. The tears came back in floods.
The album was the same type as his father's; black paper pages onto which the pictures were plastered. Fuma chose to stick his pictures onto the rough paper with glue, unlike the crumbling corners his father favored.
While Kyogo had a keen sense of aesthetics which enabled him to design each page in his album like a museum's wall (where the pictures didn't detach off the page and ruined the well planned design, that is), Fuma was a little too careless, impatient or perhaps right down clumsy to put his album into such order.
The photos were either jumbled together until it looked like one big mismatched picture or too little in number across the wide pages to seem like a good use of the sheet.
Unlike Kyogo's strict lines and equal spaces between one photo and the next, Fuma's album looked like a child's doodling pages with pictures so crooked, covered here and there by blotches of glue shaped in Fuma's fingerprint, that it looked pathetic.
It seemed, by the dates burned into the pictures, that Fuma copied his sister (or did she copy him?) by raiding the Monou family album of its Kamui pictures.
Unlike Kotori's stolen collection, Fuma's pictures of Kamui were of the boy alone and no one else around him.
Kamui standing by the dog he saved from the pouring rain when destiny winked down at its pawns and toyed with them cruelly.
The dog ran away as soon as they moved to Okinawa and Kamui never saw it again. He didn't cry for it because he wholeheartedly believed the dog wanted to go see Kotori and Fuma to tell them how much its young owner missed them.
Kamui with cake smeared all over his face, grinning a half toothless childish smile at the camera, the half crushed piece he smeared onto himself still sticking to his spread fingers.
Kamui recalled that birthday, when the newly found blind affection the Monou children made his head spin and light until he digressed into the silliest, most pathetic stupid behaviors to test the limits of their patience. Kyogo laughed so hard while he was taking that picture that the picture turned out a bit out of focus.
Kamui hugging the dog, closing his left eye as the canine licked his face enthusiastically.
It liked doing it, it was mad about him and would sleep at the foot of his bed every night, walking with him to school with his lunch bag loyally, in hope of getting a treat from the colorful case as a reward for his services.
His mother hated that dog and would scream at it to get off the sofa whenever it dared to feel too comfortable.
Kotori would go half mad whenever it barked at anything it didn't know, she was afraid of its flashing white teeth. Fuma loved it almost like a second Kamui.
Kamui on a playground swing, feet kicking forward, leaning backwards, sandals throwing a spray of sand with the might of the swing.
Kotori taught him how to leap from a swing; they'd run contests of how far they got until Kamui nearly snapped his ankle in half with the force of one of his record breaking landings.
Fuma was good with the climbing ropes and the monkey bars and he absolutely hated slides. He didn't like swings much because he knew his sister and Kamui loved playing on them.
Kamui in a bright yukata covered in happy sunflower patterns, holding a paper lantern. This was taken along with the first mysterious picture in Kotori's album. He was holding his lantern up and the light shone on his face until it seemed divine and glorious. He looked awfully girly in this picture, with flushed cheeks and lips red from candy apples.
Kamui standing on his hands with a bodiless adult holding onto his legs. His white and pink stripy T-shirt dropped almost to his chin, revealing a flat pale stomach and a set of softly covered ribs. His hair pooled on the wet grass under his pinkish head from which his eyes shone madly with excitement and joy at a stunt well played.
Kamui sitting curled on a tree branch in his elementary school uniform. He looked so feline that Kamui expected to see feathers of a belated bird he hunted clinging to the corners of his mouth. His eyes were ablaze with might, his hair unkempt and littered by dry leaves and tiny twigs. His short black pants clung to his thighs and the curve of his buttocks. He had one shoe missing, its abandoned socked foot hanging loosely on the other side of the branch like a lazy leopard.
Kamui frowned at the picture and its previous two sisters and had to wonder…
Kyogo couldn't have taken these pictures; neither could Saya because she was always giggling about how she's hopeless with devices such as cameras.
His mother never bothered with pictures. She said pictures did not serve to capture special moments, but merely to trap these shreds of lost time and torment their taker. Kamui never realized how right she was until these very moments.
So who took these pictures?
Then he remembered; Kyogo bought Fuma a camera for his tenth birthday and for the next two years until Kamui and his ways parted, the damned device never left his hands. Fuma would snap pictures of everything, in every time of day, whether his objects wished to be photographed or not.
It would have become a nuisance to his family if it weren't, as Kamui recalled it so clearly now, for his poor skills as a photographer. Almost all the pictures he took were too bad to be printed and so they never amounted to too much of a financial burden to develop them.
Kamui suddenly remembered sitting by Fuma in his room, on the childish single bed, comforting the older boy that he wasn't such a bad artist. As he looked back into those lost pieces of sweet golden history, Kamui could recall each picture Fuma showed him after long pleads and promises not to laugh.
When he looked at the pictures in the album almost seven years later, Kamui nodded at the familiar sights.
Fuma had a knack for cutting off the top of the pictures he originally planned to portray. A blooming forest became a collection of bare trunks, a group of fellow students were either decapitated or obscured beyond recognition, and ceilings disappeared.
Fuma tried taking pictures of nature, as his father did (Kamui was by now absolutely certain that Kyogo showed his beautiful collection to his son in hope of a common hobby for father and son to spend time doing) and brought far poorer results.
His pictures of flowers were blurry from movement or simply mis-focused. His photos of lakes, waterfalls and countryside were taken from wrong angles which portrayed the pearls of nature he tried to capture in an odd, amateur light. Fuma's pictures of animals, either in zoos or in the wild were mostly a collection of fleeing legs, tails, heads and antlers obscured by bushes or mesh fences.
Kamui scanned the poorly made album and its blurry, mis-taken treasures and felt such an overwhelming wave of compassion and longing for the old Fuma that he cringed violently, pressing the open album to his chest.
He wanted to press old brotherly Fuma's head to his chest instead of this cold album and run his fingers through spiky, rebellious dry hair.
He wanted to cradle the bigger man's upper body in his lonely arms and coo to him, "Hush now, it's alright, it's alright, I like you just the way you are."
But he couldn't.
The last page in the album, now leafed through with shaky weary fingers, contained a single photo, of Kamui. He was asleep on a futon Kamui clearly remembered from numerous sleepovers at the Monou estate. He was laying on his belly, hands splayed madly sideways like children do when they sleep deep in wild innocent dreams. His legs were almost knotted in the dinosaur patterned blanket from all the kicks and turns he took in it during his slumber.
The light from the nearby window fell gently in a thin pale rectangle illuminating the parquet floor, the bright lilac futon, the edge of the deep blue blanket and Kamui's face.
He was sleeping like an angel, his right cheek only gently pushed against the futon so as not to misshape his features. His lips were pouting in deep pink, his cheeks only a few hues brighter from heat and healthy sleep. His thick lashes clashed with the whiteness of his skin and the unblemished flushed cheeks.
The picture was decorated by elaborate, goofy, asymmetric designs in gold pen which bore the gauche signature of Fuma's handmade creations.
Kamui closed the album shakily and threw himself backwards on the bed, clutching his pillow to his arms and buried his face in its soft deeps to muffle his heart-wrenching sobs.
Walking to the bathroom for a bit of a break his bladder forced on him, Kamui walked into Yuzuriha.
"Oh, I'm sorry…"
Yuzuriha frowned at his sad face worriedly, "Are you feeling alright, Kamui?"
He beamed a wan smile at her, hanging his head a bit, "Y-yeah, I guess…"
"Is something wrong?"
"Uh….I-I was just flipping through some old pictures of Fuma and his family….that's all…"
To his great surprise, Yuzuriha's face gravened beyond what he thought the ever chirpy girl could be.
"Yeah, it's sad to look at old pictures. I once snooped around my grandmother's old pictures and found things that made me very sad…"
Kamui gaped in silence before he realized the girl needed the same caring attention she usually showers on him. Bashfully, he placed his palm on her shoulder, trying to look encouraging and warm.
Yuzuriha was looking at the floor, a sad little smile on her lips. "My grandmother was very much in love with my grandfather, but he died in the war and I never got to meet him. All I got to see was how happy they looked together…"
Kamui rubbed Yuzuriha's arm fondly.
"And I saw pictures of my parents….they were also very happy, father had an inugami, like my Inuki..." Yuzuriha raised her eyes to stare into Kamui's face, tears wallowing in them. "it was wonderful to see how happy they were together and how they used to hug me when I was just a little baby, but…when I look at it now, when I don't know them and don't remember them anymore….it's so very sad…"
"Please don't cry, Yuzuriha-san," Kamui heard himself plea, wrapping his arms around the girl, "I-I didn't mean to bring up such a painful subject….I'm sorry."
Yuzuriha pushed him away gently, the happy light in her eyes once again, "It's not that sad, not a bad-sad anyway. It's….nostalgic-sad, you see?"
Kamui thought about it for a moment, it didn't seep in. How can something wonderful that is now lost forever be not bad-sad?
Yuzuriha yawned and asked Kamui to forgive her for cutting the conversation short; she's very tired and has a big test tomorrow, she should go to sleep now. Kamui nodded and bid her goodnight.
The glittering embroidery covered album; Saya
Saya's album began with a large fifteen by twenty-one centimeters picture of her and her pre-marriage family.
She had a pair of fading yet strict traditional parents (father in hamaka, mother in a simple yet respectable kimono). She had three bigger brothers, the oldest of which was sporting a bubbling infant in his arms. Saya's brothers towered above her while she sat, small and fragile on a wicker chair by her mother who placed a stiff, cold hand on her daughter's knee.
Saya looked so tiny, so faded and dreamy with her long slightly unkempt wavy bright hair and her large watery absentminded eyes. The gentle tilt backwards of her head and the small, delicate hands she clasped loosely together on her lap, the pastel colored modest vest and the long white skirt, the tiny gentle pink low heeled shoes to her girlish feet; it was a Saya Kamui never knew.
She was out of place amongst her brother's dark starched suits, their army styled school uniforms and her father's black and dark grey hamaka. Her mother's strict dismissive wrinkles around her thin clenched lips and her round forehead, her sleek scalp covered by immaculate backcombed hair were too rough when compared to her daughter's softness. Saya, with her gentle feminine faded lines, was jailed amidst this sea of long strict lines and dark colors.
Kamui sighed and flipped the page to discover a forest of his young mother. The album was almost bursting with them! Pages upon pages of Tohru, Torhu, Tohru.
His mother in a long modest high school uniform plaited skirt and a white blouse with its tie lazily crooked, holding a school bag and leaning forward a bit in laughter. What made her laugh? Kamui didn't know. He only knew that he never saw his mother so loose and easygoing. He never saw such a youthful twinkle in her eyes, nor that open mouthed smile of billowing hilarity.
His mother holding a metallic blue old bicycle, head leaning backwards in frozen laughter. She wore her hair short back then, so short it almost looked like a boy's haircut.
His mother showing off a perfect report card, her expression so smug and confident it didn't seem like one of them belonged on his mother's face. Saya was sitting by Tohru, shoulder to shoulder with the other girl, showing a mediocre-to-poor report card, her eyes apologetic and her fake grin miserable.
Her mother looking at the most chaotic teen's room Kamui ever saw, running her fingers through her hair and looking desperate. The picture was slightly out of focus and Kamui imagined it was so because it's taker, Saya, was laughing while taking it.
Tohru blearing a 'V' sign with her arm around a very young shy Tokiko. The violent chill that ran through Kamui's spine as he recognized the second youth and the powerful nausea made him flip to the next page before scanning any other photos following it.
His mother leaning back on a rock in knee length khaki slacks and a short checkered shirt tucked into her pants, a wide brimmed hat tipped sideways on her head so as to seem like a carefree cowboy of sorts, one arm leaning on the boulder behind her while the other was wrapped around Saya's waist. Tohru's expression was that of a bold adventurer flashing his bravery and mock at the face of death's peril. On what expeditions were the girls when the picture was taken Kamui did not know, but judging by the sight of girls of the same age and scattered adults in the picture background, Kamui assumed it was during a fieldtrip.
Saya sat on a neighboring rock, knees folded awkwardly, arms around her legs, leaning forward as if to curl into a ball and roll away, her eyes slightly unsure, but definitely bright with happiness.
Saya in an athletic run match, caught in the moment of her arrival as first at the finishing line.
Saya balancing on one foot with a large plastic gymnastics ball tucked under her arm.
Kamui could have never guessed that Saya was the one responsible for Fuma's athletic genes.
His mother looming over a large bubbling pot, stirring its content while keenly watching it. She was oblivious to this photo's taking; she was too concentrated on cooking.
Kamui remembered the time when he asked his mother when she learned how to cook. Tohru smiled down at him and told him that it was when she realized that she needed this knowledge to survive that she began teaching herself the skills.
Saya, standing before a long mirror in an identity-less room wearing nothing but a modest white bra and matching panties.
Kamui blinked, almost startled by the sudden new way to look at Saya. She was much younger than he remembered her in this picture and her tummy was still flat and flawless without the stretch marks carved into her sides and lower abdomen from carrying giant babies like Fuma inside her. Her hips were smooth and well shaped with the right combination of feminine curves and agile muscles. Her upper body was the perfect eight shape even though her breasts were a bit too small, the charming silky valley between ribs and pelvis made up for it. She was an extremely attractive young woman.
Saya's hair was tied backwards with a loose plastic clip, spilling down like a wild mare's tail. She was turning around to the picture taker (obviously Tohru) and reaching out to block the camera's lens from capturing her hardly covered nudity. Her face was complaining and upset, powerful in its soft relentless assertive expression.
Saya on a bed with bright pink covers, hair spilling around her head like a halo of a long wild hay-colored river. She was half covered by a blanket which only hid her from waist down. She was naked, folding her arms on her chest to hide her breasts. Her eyes carried the same powerful shine as in the picture of her with her arms around the children, only in this photo she looked satisfied, almost smug.
His mother drawing the same blanket over her body, revealing only the curve of one breast and her own torso. Her hair was wild and messy, her open grinning mouth a bit angry. She too, like Saya's mirror picture, reached to grab the camera from its current capturer. The tip of Saya's finger blocked the sight of Saya's room behind Kamui's mother.
Saya was no longer the jailed fairy princess and his mother was not yet the relentless single mother survivor. Two alien women Kamui never knew, two giggling ghosts, lurking in the shadows and secluded corners to cling to each other playfully and gossip behind his back.
This is what Kotori saw and he missed completely. The true bond between the two mothers in their lives.
Kamui shut the album slowly. He will not look at the rest of the pictures.
Kamui's mind was pounding for mercy between his temples and his eyes drooped.
He needed not to think for a while, not to look at happy memories foreordained to sour into tormenting images.
He would have collapsed onto his bed to cry it off, but he cried enough and was too tired to do anything but put the embroidery covered album back in its box by the album of the unloved, misfit husband, and curl on his bed for sleep.
There was nothing to look at in the family album he had yet explored and the two baby-centered matching albums. What's to look at? Pictures of a family which was never really together? Family that splinted into broken fragments, crushed under the heavy cruel boot of a sneering fate? It was enough of a sting to his heart when he flipped briefly through the family album to check on its content and stumbled into a picture of a pregnant Saya.
And half the album was probably missing, looted by the family children and their blind admiration for him.
For him; they loved him so much, Kotori and Fuma, so unconditionally, with such force and with so much energy.
How did he repay their love?
How he failed, how he stumbled from one blunder to the next, sightless and confused. He was so naïve, even when he returned into the brief warm bosom of their rejoiced love, how utterly clueless as to who it was that loved him.
Kamui descended into relieving comatose sleep, hoping providence's cruel pendulum would not swing above his head in his dreams as it made its habit in the previous weeks.
What are pictures good for, anyway?
(end)