Middle of In-Between
Prologue-
Whatever comes my way
Disclaimer: Okay, I'm making this as simple and painless as possible.. o_o; I dun own anything! Digi-mun's not mine, it belongs to Toei and Saban and all the other rich anime companies. So if ya sue me, you won't get anything except some lint..some papers...and maybe my collection of gel pens... O.o; Start reading, you!
Did he remember it? Yeah, how could he not?
"Here I am, so alone..." He sang softly, closing his eyes as the bittersweet memory enlodged in his mind began opening again. He moved his fingers lightly, ever so slowly and carefully over his guitar as the mournful tune went on. The all-too familiar tears stung his eyes, threatening to drown him and his voice out. With every last ounce of strength he had, he willed himself to force the tears back. No, not here. Not now. He prayed that the screaming feminine fans in the crowd would just leave him alone. He wished everyone would just leave him alone.
"And there's nothing in this world I can do..." Everything flooded back, as if he was turned upside down and the all blood was rushing to his head. Damn it, why doesn't this song just end! He blinked furiously, his eyes starting to water from the effort of holding everything back, and his exhausted fingers burned with a deep, painful regret as it flew over the strings.
"Until you're back here, baby..." He drew out the late note to its fullest, whispered a clipped thank-you, and pratically jumped off the stage heading for the back stage. The crowd of shouting teens surged foward against the stage as if to prevent him from leaving, but some of his old attitude came back as he scoffed at the crazed girls screaming their heads off at him. He quickly ran towards his dressing room, making some of his fellow band members stare worriedly after him.
A tall, black-haired and heavily-muscular teenage boy, Kenji, rushed up to him, holding and waving a paper in his hand as if it was a 24-karat diamond. "Hey, Yamato, where've you been? I've got great news..." Kenji's voice trailed off as he got a good look at Yamato's dejected, disorganized face. Frowning, Kenji coughed loudly.
Yamato jumped, startled out of his thoughts. "Um...Kenji..." He tried giving him a weak smile, but it was like his muscles refused to work.
"Are you okay, man? You seem to be doing that a lot lately." Kenji asked cautiously.
"A lot? Doing what?" Yamato's voice echoed faintly, making it clear he was still disorganized. "I'm fine..." He replied firmly, but with a cold hint of harshness.
Kenji stared at him, bewildered, but shrugged and let it slide. After all, he had something to cheer him up, indefinately. "Will you look at this!" He growled seriously, dangling the piece of paper he had been clutching in front of Yamato's face once more. "This. Is. The. One."
Yamato tried to screw his face into what he hoped was a understanding look, but he knew it was falling oh-so-short. His heart...just wasn't into it. Was his heart into anything these days? He wondered to himself.
"Come on! Rejoice! Be happy!" Kenji mocked him, his voice rising with barely contained excitement. "This could mean our whole career!"
"Right. I'm sorry, Kenji. I...I'm just not in the mood. Later." Yamato launched himself into a run again, side-stepping a totally shocked Kenji and dashed into his dressing room. Upon reaching it, he slammed the door with a loud clang, maybe harder than he intended to, but if he had to stay out there one more second, no-a fraction of a second, he would've killed himself. Or at least do something drastic.
He let out a heavy sigh and glanced at his surroundings. True, it wasn't the best dressing room ever built, but it was comfortable in a homely way, and it was better than nothing. He took one step foward when a loud noise, like glass-breaking, erupted underneath his timberland boots. "What the-?" He cursed in annoyance as he withdrew his foot and peered at what he had stepped on.
He let out another loud sigh, along with a heavy groan. How could he? He bended over, picking up what seemed to be a shattered photoframe, his eyes suddenly red and puffy again. Gently he brushed away his foot's dusty print it had left on the picture, careful not to get any glass stuck in his fingers, but then...did he really give a damn?
"They say a picture's worth a thousand words..." He whispered quietly to himself. "But this one's worth my whole life...." As he trailed the last of the dust away, he found himself staring into a young teenager like himself taken a long time ago (about two years? Is that a long time? o.o-;;), only...this was a girl. Upon seeing the girl's face again, even though it was only a picture, he broke down. Tears slid down his cheeks, unchecked, but he didn't care. Nothing did anymore.
"Oh, God...Mimi..." He crumpled against the door, his legs like jelly. Alone in his quiet, delsolate room, the boy known as Yamato Ishida cried.
Middle Of In-Between
No pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
Part 1
I can't do this. It's not the right one..
She glanced over at her sheet of music, let out a vehelmant exclaimation, and shut the folder with a loud thud. She let out a long sigh, and began massaging her temples slowly. "How the hell am I going to sing that? It has no meaning whatsoever!" She uttered out between her gritted teeth.
Her manager, Auriko, looked across the table at her from where she had been studying over the contracts, eyebrows raised and her arms crossed. "But just a few days ago you said you'd sing it."
"I can't." She stood up, shoving her wooden chair into its slot, and brushed away a few stray pink strands of her hair away from her smooth face. She shivered in the freezing heavily air-conditioned modern studio, which was vast and patterned a pale lavender shade.
"But the album's due to be released this month. That's not a lot of time." Her manager protested, her glasses sliding down the tip of nose. "Mimi, you can't keep rejecting every song that comes from our script writers. You need to choose some songs, quickly." She slid a heavy stack of papers along the tabletop so they were in Mimi's eyesight. Mimi glanced down at the top sheet, read a few lines, then stopped impaitiently, glancing up at her manager again, her eyes narrowed.
"And? So? What is this junk?" Mimi asked, jabbing her index finger at the pile.
Her manager let out a sigh quite like the one she herself had just made a few minutes ago. "Okay. This is new. We've got a deal with one of companies that holds some bands; they want you to have some concerts with some of them, and perhaps record a soundtrack with them."
"You're joking." Mimi flipped back the stack of papers, carelessly letting a few of them drop down to the tiled floor, while noticing the papers kept on coming; there seemed to be no end of them. "There's way too many bands! I'm not doing concerts with all of them." She cried out, just as she let go of the pile, and a great deal of the slips went cascading to the floor like a white waterfall.
"Right. I expected that. So I'm letting it up to you to choose which one. It's your choice." The manager chanced a look at her wristwatch, then stared at the heap of papers lying on the ground. "And we also have a charity event to attend to after you've finished making your decision."
Mimi let out an impaitient groan, her headache comparitively worse, and stomped her white booted foot in anger. "Don't I have any time to myself?" She asked in a small voice.
The only other person in the room looked at Mimi like she was an animal that had escaped from its cage in a zoo. Mimi bit her lip, knowing that was a stupid question. She gave up free time, along with everything else, when she had chosen to expand her singing career. And I might not have chosen even that, if not for him... Her bitter thoughts trailed off, as the sharp voice of her manager brought her back to the present situation.
"So, Mimi, please, just choose one. Any! I don't care which, just as long as you promise to go through with it once you've chosen." Auriko said, turning back to her other folders.
"Fine!" Mimi snapped back, her tetchy mood flooding through her. "Here!" She snatched up one of the remaining papers that hadn't floated down off the table without bothering to glance at it, and shoved it at Auriko angrily, before grabbing her coat and stomping out of the room, leaving Auriko bewildered.
Auriko shook her head slightly, and looked at the paper Mimi had given, no, more like threw, at her. "So." She retrived her blue fountain pen, scrawled something onto a tiny piece of notepaper, and turned on her Nokia cell phone. Quickly she pressed some numbers, and was not the least bit surprised when the person picked it up at the first ring. "Hai, Bishoko? Kobanwa. She's chosen one, thank god. Whom did she chose? Interestingly, she did pick the one you thought she'd pick. Hai, the name of the band is No Regret. Alright. I'll come in to sign the contract tomorrow. Sayonara."
***
She stomped on the gas pedal of her volkswagen beetle furiously, waiting for her anger to subside eventually. "Come on, come on..." She fixed her eyes on the slow traffic light, waiting for it to finally turn red. She turned her head slowly to glance at the small figurine on her dashboard, glued there a long time ago. It was a yellow smiley, with a small pink heart in the middle, where it was etched, "M & M. Forever and a day." She swung her head around, refusing to look at it. Well, there it was. She could never throw it out...even though her mind screamed at her daily to stop wasting her time with it. Something held her back; just like that crest in her bedroom drawer... Then again...nothing lasts forever. Lies. A bunch of miserable, horrible lies.
She slammed her hands onto the steering wheel, trying vainly to curb her internal instincts and just jump out of the unmoving car. Lies! What kind of life is it when she can never make her own choice! Sucide? Maybe not that extreme...at least, not right now. But she knew that every beginning has an end; someday, if she didn't change, she'll lead straight for that inevitable dead end. That's just fine wth her. The light blinked green. She drove away.
What was so different with this anger..? It didn't go away as quickly as the others. She spotted her favorite Starbucks coffeeshop, and drove into the parking lot. Parking the beetle clumsily, she got out and opened the entrance to the shop.
The walls. That was what she liked so much about this particular shop. Beautiful smears of vibrant color adorned every border, even the ceiling. Relaxing music, comfortable chairs, and black tinted windows for privacy. Musicians loved coming here; so did she. Of course, the good coffee always helped. She could even start to form a smile now; definately, the cool atmosphere was calming her down better than any Zen exersizes her trainer always recommended.
"Ah, your regular table for one, Miss Tachikawa?" High class Starbucks was one of the few coffeeshops that had a waiter/butler waiting on you. Which was often very convienent.
"Maybe not...I'll just take one of the normal ones this time." She answered wearily, her eyes devoid of emotion.
"Ah." The waiter nodded knowingly, and led her over to one of the tables that was in the lounge. She sat down, her chin cradled in her hands while looking out of the distant windows. "What would you like, Miss Tachikawa?"
"The regular." She said without shifting her glance. The waiter nodded, and gathered up the unused menu. Mimi let out a low sigh, thinking back to what had happened. It seemed to be an eternity to her; maybe it was only a nightmare, and that she'd find herself in bed the next morning, peevishly annoyed at her alarm clock for ringing half an hour early. Too late now. She'd even pinched herself a dozen times to make sure, but sure enough the bruises stayed. She thought she had seen a blonde-haired guy walk past the window just then, who looked so familiar, like him.... How would she know? She hadn't seen him for two years...maybe there was still a hope.. "Stop being such an idiot, Mimi." She murmured to herself softly, sliding her blue tinted sunglasses up to the top of her head. "He's gone."
Now she sincerely wished she had taken one of the private tables instead. She felt so exposed...so infinately weak and harmless against the dozens of people surrounding her.
Where the blackbird sings
-part2-
Lost and Never Found
Author's note: Think of this as a detachment...Pretend it has nothing to do with anything.
It's actually going to be one big FLASHBACK. ::shudder:: I hate flashbacks, but I have to do it
For the sake of my fanfic.
Also: FLAShBACK, peoples. That means Mimi and Yamato will have no regconition this has happened except in the past. This would be set in season..1, on the verge of season 02, I guess.
~*Begin. The. Flashback.*~
I knew something was wrong. Something was out of balance in my perfect life. I could tell before she reached me. There was an unusual amount of fog, reminding me of a book I had once read, and once lived. I refused to turn, refused to look her in the face, because then I would have to face the truth. God, she was the truth. She was Sincerity. She was..everything I ever wanted in my life. And this thing...this event that is throwing me off center...it had to do something with her.
"Yamato-san..." She whispered in a trembling voice, tugging gently at my green sweater. Nothing. I refused to move. For once, my heart and mind were working together to stop working anyway.
"Yamato-san," She pleaded softly, urgently, as my mind began storing her words in my head, so I could always rewind and hear them again. "Please listen to me..."
I moved. I turned. I saw her. I saw cheeks, where splashes of tears had run down them, her puffy red-eyes where she had let them go. Her hands...shivering...her honey brown hair...unbrushed and tangled together. I drew back from her a step and regarded her with cold harshness. "What happened?" My voice. It was inhuman. It was not my own, as if a robot had taken out my voice box and replaced it with some mechanical device.
She glanced at me silently for a while, turning to face the lake instead. I could see she was still shaking, not because of the cold, but because of something else. Unknown, but soon to be known. I reached inside my mind for answers, clues, solutions. She wouldn't want to break up with me, would she? She wasn't cheating on me, was she? Would she...?
"I...need to tell you something." She said without looking up, her hazel eyes focused onto the water. A few ducks were swimming round carefreely, unaware of the tense moment right before them.
"Yeah? What is it?" Flat, monotonous. That was me. My fear and apprehension kept building inside my chest, and I was afraid I was going to burst. Not now, but soon.
"I..." She paused briefly for a second, shifting her gaze to meet mine. "I'm moving. Far away. I don't know if I'm ever moving back."
"Oh..." I cried, a dead whisper in the rush of mist. Strange. The mist had almost seemed to possess her, wrap her up and take her away from me. "Where?" My throat was harsh and dry, feeling like raw sanding paper.
"I have no choice..." She said sorrowfully, tears spilling once again. "My parents are forcing me. To America." Any hope that was still in me died when to said that. To America. That was too far away, even for a long distance relationship. I knew that it was going to get me nowhere, when I had asked her out the first time. Mimi Tachikawa wouldn't last forever, that love can just sputter up and die. That was what my parents had warned me about; didn't just so much as scream it at you, Ishida, when they divorced? I scolded, screamed, kicked myself for ever admitting my feelings for her.
"Oh." I repeated myself dully, partly for my benefit, to stop the rush of tears that threatened to drown my voice out.
"I'm sorry." She wiped a few of the crystal tears away with the back of her hand. "I'm so sorry..."
"Forget it." I turned away from her and started speedwalking in the opposite direction. I didn't need this. I didn't need her. Heartache and pain. God, who am I kidding? I wanted her with me. I don't want her to leave. Stop walking, Ishida... My heart cried out feebly against the rush of adrenaline I had received. I wanted to pound something. Something that would make my hand bleed, so I could wake up from this damn nightmare.
I stopped walking, looking back to catch a glimpse of her running away from the park, muffled sobs coming out faintly to where I was standing. I felt...like dirt. I had turned on her when she most needed me. I was selfish, so selfish I broke up with her so I wouldn't have to face leaving her. My heart clamped up, had turned back to what I had been when we were stuck in Digiworld. God Ishida, what have you done...?
Leaning against the metal gates to the entrance of the park, I broke down.
Where the blackbird sings
Forever gone
Part 3
Author's note: This is a continuation of the Flashback. (isn't this font just driving you wild? :P) :Switch to Mimi's point of view: Anyway, this will be the last part of the flashback, I hope you enjoy it. The story will continue on, of course, after the flashback; I wouldn't be that cruel! ^^; This is really long....Enjoy, all! :D Sayonara!
*begin*
Oh, God. Help me. He left me. He left me because he didn't want to be with me. How can that be true? How can my life so abruptly end? It had been going along so well... Now I know for sure. I know that he doesn't love me...I can't blame him for that. But still, I hate him. I hate that Ishida.
I blew a few stray strands of my strawberry hair away from my face with little effort. He had always said that he loved the color strawberry, because it reminded him of me. I guess not anymore.
You know how weird it is, when something happens unexpectedly, and all you can do is nod and act like you know what's happening? That's me. That's me, sitting in the yellow taxi, nodding politely to myself, wondering where I had went wrong. I knew he wouldn't have responded well with the news of me moving. It broke my heart to say it to him, and then he broke mine. That had did it. He broke up with me, with words that could not express the feeling I had been going through.
"Yama-san..." I breathed in sharply through my nose, trying to find his scent, trying to sense his colgone he had always worn, the one that smelled faintly of musk but could turn into a hazy fog of gentle rain. I wanted him to come to me. I was leaving today, and I wanted desperately for him to see me, for me to see him and think the incident in the park meant nothing.
If only that could come true.
I waited a few more precious seconds, silent and still as the driver loaded my suitcase into the trunk and slammed it with a loud thud.
"Miss? We're ready to go now."
I waited another minute, and another. The driver must have realized something was not right with his unusual customer, the girl with the wet frozen tears dripping down her face as she stared out the fogged-up window dazedly, her hands folded precariously on her lap, because he kept silent.
He wasn't coming. He wasn't waiting for me at my apartment building, he wasn't waiting for me like he always did when we still loved each other. God, who am I kidding..? I still love him. Love doesn't come to you quickly, and it doesn't go away quickly. That's why I had waited so long to say it to him, and I was so deleriously happy he had said it to me.
I'm reminicsing too much about him. Let the past bury its dead. I was moving on, with or without him. Even if my heart was torn away from my chest, even if it meant never coming back to Odaiba. That was okay. That was...not okay.
The tears were not wet or frozen anymore as they moved down my cheeks with rapid fluency, dripping onto my carefully laundered blouse, the buttons suddenly becoming shiny as the tears encased them. I've had an obsession with laundry ever since the day in the park. Strange. I suppose...I suppose I'm becoming crazy. Isn't that funny....? Isn't it funny how one can become so desperately paranoid? I wonder maybe if I should start talking to myself, though...isn't that what I'm doing right now? I would like to see the driver stare at me, like he should drive me to a psyhiatric ward instead of the airport. God, it'll be so damn funny, wouldn't it? Would Yama-san come visit me in the mental hospital? I wouldn't be moving away to America then, so maybe he wouldn't have to break up with me. Yeah, that'd be a good plan.
I wiped my tears away with the back of my hand, and nodded curtly at the driver. Well, if Yama-san could live without me, maybe I could live without him. It wasn't that hard, was it...? Wasn't it.....?
The taxi hurtled through traffic, and I felt as if my heart, my brain was being stomped on by the front tires as it roared through the streets. Once we had stopped by the destination gate for my airplane, I paid and left. The driver was kind, I guess, kind enough to help load my suitcase into a baggage cart, so I left him a generous tip. I'm really generous, aren't I...? I feel so damn generous that I feel like joining one of those monasteries where you do nothing but pray all day, that's how generous I felt. Damn it, I felt like I was on top of the world. I was standing on top of everyone, out to lead my own life, out to spin dizzily with no control in the light atmosphere. I could handle this.
I paused to look down at a puddle, where rain had fallen the night before and had dripped down to this small pool of clean rainwater. My eyes stared back in my reflection, hollow and without feeling. A tiny laugh escaped my harsh throat as I realized what I had become. Was this the Mimi Tachikawa that had been waiting beneath all my good intentions, beneath all my love and all my joyful expressions? Grief, sorrowful, unsure and unsteady without the crutch that had once been Yamato Ishida?
Sobs racked out of my body as I fell to my knees, getting wet without a care in the world, crying out with all the emotion I had left in my numb body. I wept. For me, for my friends, for him, for my damned soul. (figuratively speaking, please. --;)