Still Life Tears On Canvas
Disclaimer: Marimite characters and places property of Oyuki Konno. All the other stuff is mine. I know it's a shameless self-insertion, but I have to do this somehow.
Chapter 1: The Circumstances Under Which We Met
Tomiko
Well, here I am.
The cherry blossoms seemed to wave me into Lillian Girls' University as I walked down the path to the main square. Today was opening ceremony for all levels in Lillian, and I passed by some highschoolers on the way to the university. Boy, do I ever feel relieved not to wear those uniforms. Thankfully, the administration seemed to realize that its college students' pure minds and bodies should be wrapped in something other than the dark uniforms, that their collars can afford to be untidy, and their skirts' pleats could afford to show. Unfortunately for me though, walking slowly is still preferred here. It kind of pisses me off. Haha.
Well, anyway, it's not like I came here primarily to socialize, so they can cast me out all they want. I just want in so I can get a degree in fine arts. That's it.
I wore my hair down today. I usually don't do that, but since I'd be spending a good part of my morning under the cherry blossoms, I kept wishing that my sort of untidy hair can catch some of the petals. Then I'd have an excuse to pick them off, stick them in my pocket and enjoy them in private without looking like a complete idiot. I really, really love the smell of cherry blossoms. If it weren't for them I'd hate spring completely.
There were already quite a few girls out on the square, and some of them were lining up to receive their Lillian pendants, which would supposedly symbolize their entrance into happy university life. I knew it was too early for me to receive my happy university life, since they were still on "e", and my last name starts with a "ha", so I made my way to the group of folding chairs at the back of the line.
I was about to sit down on of them when someone yelled a sharp "Matte, matte!"
I turned around to see a girl with ash brown hair and grey eyes looking at me. She grinned sheepishly when our eyes met. Another harufu.
"Hai?" I asked, cocking one eyebrow.
She stood up and casually put her hands behind her head. She looked like the type to play tricks. I could have sworn I saw her big bushy tail swishing about behind her.
"Ano sa… are you going to sit there?" she asked. Her hair was cut in a very mannish manner, and her bangs kept getting in her eyes as she squinted at me in the morning light.
DUH!
"We-ell… I was going to, but now I get the feeling that I shouldn't. Why do you ask, though?"
"Eh, ano, warii, I completely forgot myself and put my feet up on your chair," she replied. She would've been pretty if she weren't so gawky. "Here, let me clean it," she offered, hands poised to dust off the chair. I pulled out some tissues from my pocket and shoved them into her hands.
"You could at least use tissue," I said. Spring didn't exactly put me in a good mood and seeing this girl carelessly try to clean the chair was getting on my nerves. I felt my patience about to snap.
Harufu-girl grinned at me again and took to brushing off the chair. There were some huge clumps of wet soil on my seat, which would've soiled the jeans I was planning to wear for the week.
Amazed at the huge amount of soil on the soles of her boots, I asked, "Where exactly have you been? Did you plant in a field or something?" The last time I saw this much dirt was when my stepbrother trudged thru the garden just after it rained. My stepbrother is around ten years younger than me or this girl.
"I guess you could say that," she said, turning up to grin at me weirdly. She rubbed off the remaining mud with a flourish. "There, all done."
"Thanks," I said, sitting down. "You didn't have to go through all the trouble."
Surprisingly though, she winked at me as she did the same. "Anything to know a pretty lady's name. What is it? Mine's Sei. Satou Sei."
"Are you a—?" I stopped myself cold with a cough. "Harada Tomiko. It's nice to meet you, Satou-san. " I smiled. I guess I just thought she hit on me.
"Wow. How do you write your name?" she asked.
I pulled out a piece of paper and wrote it down. "Here."
"Hmm," she murmured appraisingly. "This radical right above here, on to tells me your name's quite auspicious. Your parents must've been quite the conscientious feng shui believers."
Say WHAT?
"Er, I don't know about that, but it was my grandmother's name."
"I can do numerology readings too."
"Numerology?"
"You know, how numbers of your house, your phone, even your keitai can change the flow of chi in your life. Say, write down your keitai number and I'll do that."
I wrote down my mobile phone number on the paper. "Here."
She took it and stared at it for a few seconds. "E-tou…" she started, her brows furrowed in concentration. "Ah, well, your number was probably handpicked for you, then. You must have been destined to have it," she said, not taking her eyes off the piece of paper in her hand.
I raised an eyebrow. Did I mention I was a born skeptic?
"Heh? What made you say that?" I ask, peering over her shoulder.
"This number actually tells me that you are probably very smart, good-natured, naturally trustworthy person, albeit quite trusting yourself. You had better be careful," Sei warned.
That didn't even come close! The most annoying part was that she sounded so freaking sure she was right!
"Just exactly how do you know all this to be true?" I asked.
"Do you really want to know?" she asked, leaning in close. So close I could get a good whiff of her cologne. It might have been just my imagination, but I distinctly remember this scent from a new product promotion in the men's section at Lumines last week.
Sei grinned again, a grin that I've somehow come to despise. "We-ell… you did trust me, a complete stranger, so much as to give me your name and mobile number."
She was RIGHT! How could I have been so darn STUPID?!
Sei was quick on the draw though. She easily evaded all my desperate attempts to snatch the piece of paper back and raised it way out of my reach, which was easy because she was about six inches taller than I was. This harufu apparently got the best of both worlds. I managed to get lucky, though. I grabbed at one end of the paper, tearing it clean down the middle.
I immediately tucked it into my chest and smiled at her smugly. "I don't think you'll be getting that from THERE any time soon," I gloated.
"Oh? Is that a challenge?" she mused, moving closer until her face was just a couple of inches away from mine. Her grey eyes bore so intensely into mine I couldn't take it. I turned my face away, shutting my eyes as tight as I can manage. I could feel her breath on my cheek, for crying out loud!
"Fortunately for me though, that isn't a problem," she whispered into my ear. She pulled away suddenly and pulled out a small black mobile phone. "I can have any girl's number I want anyway," she said with a grin.
That cockiness set my teeth on edge. Does she actually think she's that attractive enough that she can get anyone to do her bidding? I was about to launch into a litany of what she should do with her small phone and her big mouth when I felt my own phone start to vibrate. Without looking at the number, I turned away, pulled it out of my pocket and answered.
"Hai, Harada desu."
"Ho, so polite! I like that duality in a woman," Sei's voice cracked like a whip in the earpiece. "I have sort of a crammer's brain, so I retain things pretty quickly. I could still reach into your shirt if you really wanted me to, though."
I glared at her over my shoulder and closed the phone with a sharp clack. I tried my best to hold her smug little gaze.
"If you think your little way of bullying me is going to get me for the rest of my college life, you have another thing coming," I said resolutely. "This went out with middle school."
"Oh no, no, no, koneko," she said placatingly. "This isn't bullying. I just want to be friends. There'd be no bullying, though a little dating every so often wouldn't hurt." She looked at me like a lecherous old crone. "Nope, not at all."
"Shut UP."
I turned around to face the stage, completely ignoring the sickeningly pleasant humming of the ashy-haired girl behind me. Or at least I was trying to.
Another girl had made her place in the seat on the seat next to me in the commotion, and she looked at me worriedly.
"You okay?" she asked. She had brown eyes, dark hair, and something told me she wasn't all Japanese. I smiled at her and nodded.
"Yeah. Thanks for asking," I replied. "Just the typical freshman butterflies."
She grinned. "Oh good. I thought Satou-san had really gotten to you. My name's Rizu," she continued, extending her hand.
I took it. "Tomiko. Nice to meet you," I said.
"What course are you taking?" Rizu asked.
"Fine Arts."
"U-so! Me too!"
Finally, someone who makes friends normally!
"Ja, let's have a great year," I said. "I hope we get to be classmates."
Then from the corner of my eye, I saw Sei stand up hurriedly with a sharp "Hai!" and walk out of the aisle. She stopped midway, looked sheepish and apologetic talking to someone over on the row beside ours and made her way back.
"Well, isn't that funny? Who knew someone named Katou Kei would attend this school?" she muttered under her breath.
"That's because someone needs to pay more attention to what was happening," I said loud enough for her to hear. "They're just on 'ka', you know," I said, looking over at her.
Sei leaned in. " I was so distracted by the beautiful barbarian girl in front of me that I lost all sense of time and comprehension," she said dreamily, tracing a finger over the apple of my cheek.
I caught her hand and put it down firmly. "Well, this barbarian girl thinks you should just shut up and wait for your turn. It's almost to 'sa'."
I turned to Rizu and grinned. As I expected, there was a lot of banter throughout the whole opening ceremony.
And that's how my uneasy friendship began.
Sei
I despise opening ceremonies. Actually, I despise any sort of ceremony whatsoever. You can get an idea of how self-important someone is by sitting through crap like this, you know. And this was stretching on and on. There were only two good things I could think of about being here at the moment, and those were 1) at least I wasn't in class, and 2) Harada Tomiko.
I was watching her talking to the girl next to her, Rizu, I think she was called, and I couldn't help but grin. Their conversation (yes, I was eavesdropping, bite me) was interesting, and involved some potshots and a lot of giggling at the silliness of other girls, their own little interests, the sakura blossoms, and repeated questions of when the ceremony would end. Ah, so I was not alone in that.
As they talked, I caught glimpses of Tomiko's profile. Damn, that girl was pretty. Physically, she was what most people here would call different. A half-breed, like me, with long, auburn hair, fair skin, and startling ice-blue eyes, eyes that would have struck me as cold because of their unusual coloring but then, by the time I managed to get her face-to-face with me I already had an idea of her personality.
But I guess I'm getting ahead of myself here. Barbarian girl's addled my brain, and now I can't think straight. Now there's a joke! Of course I can't think straight!
I'd been in a clearing in the 'woods' within Lillian University's walls (there's something about Lillian and trees, apparently), and I'd been doing some thinking. I had told Yumi that I'd start fresh in college, take things easy and just have fun. I'm not one to go back on what I said I'd do, but there was one thing that I simply had to get rid of if I really wanted a brand-new start.
With a stick, I opened up a small hole in the ground beneath a tree that stood rather apart from the others. Then, I took my rosary from highschool, not the one I'd given to Shimako but my own, and I laid it down there. There are too many memories to mention, but they all flooded my mind, some lingering more than others and a lot of those that lingered were memories I didn't want to deal with at the moment. It's a good thing I remembered my promise to Yumi at that point, and I stood up and filled in the grave. I patted it down and covered it up with some fallen leaves, small branches, and sakura blossoms. For a few moments I was lost in contemplation, and then all of THAT flew out the proverbial window when I caught sight of a girl walking down the path leading to the main square.
Well, of COURSE I would see a girl walking down to the main square. This is Lillian. There are OODLES of girls. But there was something about this girl—I don't know, maybe the way she carried herself—that called my attention. Before I knew it, I was following her at some distance, behind the trees. Like some stalker. I was both amused and disgusted with myself.
When I realized I was hard-pressed to keep up with the girl while keeping quiet and hidden behind the trees, I suddenly knew why she struck me as different from the others. She didn't walk slowly and gracefully, like most Lillian zombies. Not that she was striding manfully down to the square, but she wasn't dreamily floating around like an idiot on an imaginary cloud.
Then she stopped, her head turning in my direction. I had to keep as still and straight as a corpse stacked upright against a tree. My heart was actually skipping beats, and I was caught between feeling excited and scared. Some mature college student I was turning out to be. Holding my breath, I peered out cautiously.
The girl was bending down, standing over something that had obviously attracted her attention. She reached out a hand and made gentle, stroking motions. A while later, I heard a small meow, followed by contented purring.
Well, what do you know? She made friends with the cat.
Without even seeing it, I knew that the cat was the mountain cat I'd 'tamed' when I was still a highschool student next door. The cat never returned to the wild, it sort of just hung around and then crossed over eventually to Lillian U. I like to think that it followed me, but you never really knew with cats.
The girl's hair hung like a curtain over her face, catching the sunlight in an auburn mirror. After a moment, she stood up and walked on, and so I followed. I was beginning to warm up to this stranger, and I didn't even know her name.
I resolved to find out.
Digging around in the dirt proved to have been a move in my favor, as I later found out. I snuck out past the trees and made my way to the line-up of chairs. Mystery girl was looking for a seat to park her bum (which was pretty attractive, in my honest opinion), and so I waited…waited…
At the last possible moment, I hurriedly propped my feet up on the seat of a likely selection. If there's anything that worked in my favor at all, it'd have to be my luck. And luck would have it that the dirt from my boots came off in huge flakes and chunks on the seat, AND the girl was about to sit down on it, not having noticed me or what I was doing. She was either blind or as spaced out as some people I knew back in highschool. And so, at the last minute, I yelled out "Matte, matte!"
The girl started a bit, then turned around and looked right at me, and I swore for a moment that any charming greeting I had been thinking of saying died on the tip of my tongue. Her eyes were a startling, soul-knifing ice-blue. If it hadn't been for the fact that she'd shown kindness to an animal, I might've been a little frightened of those eyes, but instead of coldness, I saw only kindness—and mild confusion. That interesting mix of cool color and warm emotions swimming together in twin pools made me grin. The rest of her face wasn't bad either. She was definitely Eurasian, and it was a good mix.
I guess I should've said something, but I was getting a bit lost in those eyes, and I suppose time lagged a little too much, and before I knew it, the girl said "Hai?"
I stood up—maybe too quickly or eagerly—and asked her if she was going to sit there. A stupid question, part of my brain chided derisively. She answered that she'd been about to, but now got the feeling that she shouldn't. I explained apologetically about her seat, and we spent a few awkward moments trying to get it cleaned up. At least I was doing the wiping with some tissue she'd rather forcibly shoved into my hands. Our fingers made contact briefly, and I felt like a hapless little schoolboy who'd just managed to touch his first crush. What can I say? This girl was cute.
I introduced myself, slipping in a compliment in my own flirtatious fashion, and after an unfinished question she told me her name and smiled at me. That smile seemed to warm the air around me. She was sooooo pretty when she smiled. I gave myself a mental pat on the back for having excellent taste, and then thought that since I had her name, I might as well gain access to her address and number. That might prove to be a bit tougher; Miss Tomiko wasn't in the best of spirits, I could sense, and she might mistake me for a pervert. Which, of course, I am, but I didn't want her to know that just yet.
In retrospect, I think I may have gone a bit too far by tricking her into giving me her keitai number. She seemed pretty pissed off. And still her eyes gave off sparks instead of freezing into cold, hard agates. Flirting with her and teasing her had been fun, though. It looked like I was going to be able to relax and take it easy, just as I promised I would, if Tomiko would let me.
She did manage to get me back for all the teasing I put her through. At one point in the ceremony, I thought I heard my name being called out, and so I stood up and got all the way over to the aisle when I saw someone standing up and making her way to the center aisle as well. I frowned slightly, wondering if I'd somehow heard wrong.
The girl looked at me curiously. She had dark hair and glasses. "I'm sorry, I think I'm the one they called," she said as we met in the center aisle.
"Eh? Didn't they call out 'Satou Sei'?" I asked her.
She shook her head. "We're still on 'Ka'. My name is Katou Kei."
I resisted the urge to slap my forehead. I had been too busy ogling Tomiko that I hadn't paid any attention at all to the ceremony. The people up on stage were looking at us curiously, and I could tell they were getting impatient and wanted to speed things up. So I deliberately ignored them and grinned at the girl with glasses. "So, what course are you in?"
She smiled. "English Literature."
I pulled a Rizu and said "U-so! Me too!"
We both laughed. The girl then gave me a dry smile and said "Well, I'll see you around. Right now though, I have to receive my pendant, and you're slowing my happy college life down. Dewa, shitsurei." She bowed to me, then went on up to the stage.
I went back to my seat and a well-aimed jab from Tomiko. Ah, so she'd taken notice. She wasn't completely ignoring me after all. I smiled and used the opening to flirt with her again, and she matched wits with me by pointedly reminding me that I ought to shut up, sit down, and pay attention. I leaned back in my seat, content to watch her back as sakura petals sailed down to gently settle in her slightly-mussed hair.
A great way to start my new life.