i.
the first time he saw the girl, he was but an outsider looking in.
he had been walking past a row of apartments on a street that was strangely empty for a saturday afternoon. he learned the reason for this odd phenomenon only moments later, when the heavens opened and cried thick, blinding tears. he crossed the street in search of shelter and stepped under the awning of the nearest shopfront, reaching a hand to brush back the waterlogged hair that had fallen into his eyes. he leaned back against the glass window of the building, slumping slightly as his eyes closed and his thoughts raced.
he wondered what his lover would have thought of the rain. he'd never had much of a problem with it, with no opinion one way or another but mika- mika he could see running out into the downpour, opening her arms and face to the sky and spinning gleefully like a child. he pictured her jumping into puddles without a care in the world, and shaking his head at her antics and scolding her for getting her shoes all dirty.
while her immature behavior might have mildly irritated him at times, he would give anything to have her back. anything. but this wasn't something namie-oneesan could take care of (the way she always did) because she couldn't raise the dead, even for her precious younger brother. if she could have, she likely wouldn't have wanted to, but she would have done it- done anything to make her brother happy.
but that didn't matter because the light in his world was gone, her life force snuffed out as quickly as a candle in a breeze, and he had to learn to accept this new dreary and dank reality. perhaps going inside the shop could do him some good; he couldn't remember the last time he spoke to someone, to someone other than himself. he was starting to feel the chill from his wet clothes sinking in and down to the bone, and the shiver running down his spine convinced him to straighten up and turn toward the door.
reaching for the doorknob, he glanced into into the cheery looking café through the small glass window, and what he saw, made him catch his breath. a slender girl was sitting at a small table just across from his vantage point, and when their eyes met, it was as if time stopped. he stared at her, and she gazed back calmly with just a hint of a smile turning up the corners of her lips. the spell was broken when she tilted her head in a gesture of mild curiosity, the movement, although slow and gradual, startled him enough to bring him back to reality, or what served as his reality these days, anyway.
immediately he turned away, even walking a ways down the street in the rain to get away from the girl. he thought he must be going crazy, because for a moment, the brunette was so intensely familiar that his heart had nearly burst from his chest. she didn't resemble mika much, if at all, but it was that short hair and fair skin, both so similar in shade to those he had known all too well, that drove him crazy.
he couldn't bear to think of that strange young woman in the remainder of his waking hours, but as he slept that night, he saw the two of them the moment his eyelids fluttered shut. in his dreams, they were separate but the same, and the same but different, constantly changing and blurring together in his head until he was wholly confused. he woke determined to find that girl again. he had to know who she was, so he could forget her as if she were just another nobody. no one would ever be mika, no one could ever replace her, and he couldn't allow himself to indulge in that pipe dream for any longer.
Thank you for reading! This was written in a short burst of inspiration, and I sincerely hope that I can return to this concept soon and give this ship the consideration it deserves. It will be a six installment work in all, five chapters and an epilogue. I wanted to at least get it started while the rare-pair event was still going on, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed my venture into a different style of writing.
You can find me on tumblr at jameslarkin (my personal blog) and hopesque (drrr roleplay with links to other accounts I manage).
Reviews, follows, and favorites are appreciated!
