Disclaimer: I don't have anything witty to say here. Obviously, Kyo Kara Maoh's not mine.
Say My Name
Summary: "Then why are you looking at her?" the blond demanded. Yuuri looked away. "It's not what you think," he replied. But the look on his eyes told everything that Wolfram needed to know.
Note: No character-bashing here in this fic. And yes, there's no OC here. This would be explained more on upcoming chapters.
Chapter One: The Separate Departures
It was another cold, dismal day. Yuri thought so too. He rushed home as he swerved around his bike, trying to beat the rush hour traffic. Classes for today were canceled, due to some super typhoon that was bound to reach Japan within today.
The schools didn't want to take chances though. Now, at 1:35 pm, crowds of students were already swarming out of the gates and into the streets.
He glanced at the sky. Rain hadn't even started yet. The swirls of gray, rumbling masses of clouds resembled like omens of damnation and suffering. This was the reason Yuri Shibuya hated the rain.
He reached home in a new record, only seven minutes. Considering that in a normal, average day, he'd take to about fifteen minutes or so to go back home from school.
"Are you okay, Yuri?" asked his mother warmly. He shook his head, drawing warmth from his mother's tender brown eyes.
It was a customary question, asked for everyday routine's sake. But especially with an impending storm, his mother was worried of her son.
"Some cream puffs would be nice," he added. He glanced at the house. His older brother was missing. Again.
"Okay," said Jennifer and she returned towards the kitchen.
He went upstairs and pondered over several matters. Such as any remaining schoolwork left to be done. For this, he called Murata, who promptly gave him a very accurate, detailed, to-do list for this week. Yuri knew there was a fair chance of classes going to be canceled for tomorrow also, but he didn't want to take any chances.
This took him two hours and half. Halfway through, his mother interrupted with a plate of heated cream puffs. Yuri was grateful and he finished his work in a considerably lighter mood. Before that interval, rain was already pounding hard and his emotions were dampened to a significant degree.
That was the effect of the rain on Yuri.
On the other side of the town, a girl of about sixteen shivered outside. She was only wearing a pale yellow raincoat to shield herself against the forces of nature. Apart from her knitted sweater and a short skirt, there was nothing to keep her from feeling the freezing cold.
But she persisted, walking on along the riverbank. Despite the chilly weather and the strong torrent of rain.
She really didn't have anything much in the way of money. She only had her rucksack that contained her most precious possessions, most of which was there because of sentimental and practicality reasons, nothing worth that much.
She felt so empty, and so alone. Nobody within a ten meter radius was in sight and it was perfectly understandable why. There was a raging storm, that's what.
But that knowledge didn't made her stop. She plodded on. She knew that she was doing this at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons.
Snippets of conversations from the past flashed their way to her mind. 'There really is no better time to do something at all,' one voice above all the others stuck to her.
It was the voice of her mother.
It was also the same person who abandoned her. Who left her alone, at the mercy of strangers. Strangers who really were…strangers. After she thought
they were kin, after everything that had happened and after everything she'd done for them. She supposed she should've known better, after all, her own kin felt like outsiders to her too.
But a small voice in her mind cut back to her.
Wait, abandoned? That wasn't right.
She forcedly reminded herself that it was not that it was her choice. It wasn't as if her mother knew that she was going to leave her one, dependent, frail daughter behind. Her mother would never do that.
But all the same, the idea kept haunting her mind.
She cried, willing herself to stop those taunting voices. It did nothing, it only made her hurt. Whosever fault this was didn't matter anymore.
They did nothing, but only served as more fuel for her to move on.
"Yuri, bath's ready!" called out Jennifer.
The said-mentioned boy yawned and stretched his arms. "Coming," he responded.
He went out of his room, taking his towel along with him. The strong downpour of rain lasted for three hours or so, but it was now over. There was only a fine drizzle outside.
Even though the temperature was colder than normal, Yuri still liked to have a hot bath. His mother was concerned, what if he got a cold afterwards? He shrugged it off and reassured his mother.
"Remember, ten minutes and you're out," admonished Jennifer.
"Uh-huh," he replied as he entered the bathroom and closed the door. He clambered inside the tub and sank there until only the top of his head was visible.
Yuri closed his eyes and felt the warm water soaking into his limbs, like some sort of an elixir bringing strength to his body. His mind was at ease and all his worries draining away. His body was aching, after the stressful torture it had received physically, mentally and emotionally.
After doing his schoolwork, his mother told him to help around the house. He agreed, because he felt he needed to stretch his limbs and doing menial work was going to help unclog his numbed brain. Yuri had no idea how damaging it was for his pride when he decided to chop onions. Tears flowed unbidden from his eyes, while Jennifer chuckled at the sight of her grown-up son crying.
"And to think it's onions, Yuri! I thought this might occur because of girls!" chortled his mother. Yuuri glared at her, which really wasn't that effective considering the still-flowing tears.
Then his mother decided to clean up the living room. As in 'clean up', like moving around the furniture, not just sweeping and mopping up the floor. He had no idea what entered his mother's mind when she decided to do it, because it was a rainy day and too early for spring cleaning. But he complied, and wished he'd reread his mangas instead.
Jennifer was actually the type of woman that was too spick-and-span picky. Her son only found out about this, after moving the couch (which sure weighed a damn twenty tons to him) in several places, for like thirty times. Only to have the couch repositioned at the same spot as it first was.
So it was only fair that after the living room looked positively 'neat and tidy' to his mother, he demanded a hot bath and paella for dinner. Hmm. Thinking about the paella made his stomach growl. Yuri smiled, thinking about how satisfied his tummy was going to be later. He was sure there was going to be paella, even if his mother had a shocked expression in her face when he made clear his wishes.
Jennifer once found a paella recipe that didn't took too long and could be done on the rice cooker. Yuri didn't believe it when his mother first attempted to cook it up. He secretly ordered pizza in case dinner turned out to be inedible for humans. After all, who cooks paella on a rice cooker? But for all that it was worth, it was delicious right down to the very last grain of rice.
He suddenly opened his eyes. He could've sworn he heard a ringing sound. It wasn't that loud, yet it wasn't too soft to ignore either. It was coming from deep within, like the vibration of a gong being struck.
He frowned. Was that his mother signaling him to get out already? But it didn't feel like ten minutes had already passed.
He shrugged. He decided to get up. The ringing was still ongoing. He wondered what newfangled, electrical equipment it came from. A 'hey, Yuri! Ten minute's up,' could suffice already.
"I'm coming," he called out.
Then it happened.
The girl shivered uncontrollably. She was miserable inside and outside as well. Her boots sloshed through the puddles of water in the streets. Her arms were wrapped around her.
The heavy deluge had been lessened already, but there was still a fine mist of rain falling down. Well, compared to the strong torrent before, it was actually bearable at most.
She took shelter inside a pay phone booth. She let the hood down and stared at the blurred reflection at the glass. Her long, brown hair, usually tied up in braids, was let down. It looked ragged and unkempt. She sighed, as that was the least of her worries for the moment.
As expected, she hadn't met a single soul on the way except if you count the passing vehicles on the road. She was sure that every driver actually spared a glance at her, wondering what in the world was making the poor girl strolling under heavy rain. One of them even stopped by and offered her a ride home.
She refused, of course. On normal situations she would've gladly accepted and thank whoever it was from the depths of the bottoms of her heart. Except that this wasn't normal. If it was, she wasn't even going to be walking outside on a billowing storm.
And then there was the matter about where her home is. Home.
She thought that she could've accepted even a dingy shed as her home. As a place where she could stay, freely.
Thinking about it, she decided to rack her brain for solutions to her second major problem. And the one more pressing and urgent for the moment, apparently.
Because she couldn't stay outside walking forever. Someone somewhere was bound to pick her up and bother her tenaciously, asking of her origins and of her family, her house and her reasons. Then present her to the police. Or something akin to that.
The girl thought hard. There were several, abandoned structures near the beach, as she remembered. She had been there so long ago, yet that little detail stuck to her.
She once asked her mother to whom where those rotting, decrepit edifices belonged to. Her mother smiled and told her it belonged once to rich people, who abandoned their vacation houses the moment something new beckoned them away from the place. Back then, she thought it wasn't true, just another adult-fabricated, supposed-to-be-logical explanation to calm children's minds. She considered those houses actually as the lodgings of several monsters who plagued her mind back then.
She almost laughed, then bit back her tongue. Time to get moving.
But first, she opened her wallet and counted the money left. There was still enough for her to survive on the streets for a week or two. She hadn't even emptied her bank account yet.
And she had no plans to do so, she intended to get a job. Even if she was a high school dropout. A job as a janitor or something as blue-collar was still better than having no source of income at all.
She moved out of the pay phone booth and briskly walked towards the beach. Upon reaching there, she quickly examined closely the row of dilapidated buildings there. Most of them were sagging already under the work of nature and mismanagement for years. They were all bungalows, with once-vivid cobalt blue tiled roofs. Some of the tiles were missing and she was sure there was already a flood of rainwater inside.
The windows were either so dusty you couldn't see a single thing or broken or vandalized. The doors were rotting but locked. She decided to test her luck. She kicked hard on one of them. It budged, but didn't swing open as expected.
She continued her tirade and just when the door looked as if it was about to snap under pressure, it swung open. A smile tugged at her lips at her achievement.
She remained doing this for several minutes or so, inspecting closely a house, kicking the door open and then scrutinizing the inside. If there were puddles of water forming there already, she'd move away from it.
Finally, she found one that seemed ten years constructed later than the others. It still had a roof, and the windows were intact. True, the dust was so thick she sneezed the moment she came inside and the outside was overgrown with weeds and thorns. But beggars can't be choosers after all.
She settled in, then as the rain slowly dissipated, she decided to go outside. The roaring of the waves seemed to beckon at her.
Slowly, she descended to the waters. There was some kind of a ringing echoing from the waves. She knew this sounded delusional.
But the ringing continued on. It didn't seemed like the product of her overwrought, tired mind.
She couldn't explain it, it wasn't too loud or too soft. It couldn't have come from nearby, she doubted anyone would be actually turning up the volume of their transistors so loud in this rainy day and outside too.
But the ringing was still there. She descended down to the waters.
Then the waters suddenly opened up.
Yuri watched in half-shock and in half-exasperation as the waters suddenly swirled, forming a whirlpool with him at the center.
How many times this happened while he was in the bath tub already? He didn't know the exact number but knew it exceeded beyond ten.
He knew that this was urgent, if the underwater portal connection thingy to Shin Makoku had opened up. He wondered what was this all about.
'Hopefully, nothing that it involves murder and/or theft,' was his last thought as the water sucked him below.
The girl watched in horror and fascination. The waters were gurgling, roaring beneath her.
She had no idea as of what to make for this sudden new development. Perhaps the possibility of her suffering some sort of idiosyncrasy that quickly ballooned into a psychological problem after everything that happened recently was quite possible.
Or someone decided to test a new underwater, whirlpool-maker machine just at the same time she decided to take a dip at the beach.
She looked down. She was already waist-deep in the water.
Then the water pulled her in.
At the palace, many people—from soldiers, courtiers or someone who worked in any of the departments—bustled by. Contrary to the awful weather at the human world, the sun was shining and suggested a merry day. Everything was normal. Nothing seemed out of place.
Except if you count their missing king. Or the king's quite fed up fiancé, now in another fit of hysterics, after another invention by Miss Anissina that brought Gwendal in an exceptional outburst that showed his increasingly ill temper.
In fact, if Yuri had known about this, he might actually bang his head at the wall. So there wasn't anything actually life-threatening for the demon tribe today, why did the Great One decided to deprive him of his paella dinner?
Was it because of Gwendal's one-of-a-kind, extremely rare outburst? While that might have been amusing and worth a laugh or two, Yuri didn't know if it compared to the satisfaction his tummy was going to get because of the paella.
Or was it because of the newest, mind-dazzling, beguiling invention courtesy of Miss Anissina. He wasn't sure about that too, but perhaps if it was a paella-whipping machine…
What about his fiancé's impending wrath of doom? Been there, done that. While a sulking Wolfram wasn't much fun to be with, at least Yuri survived.
He didn't know it, but he had a feeling it had something to do with someone. Someone who wasn't from the palace. From Shin Makoku perhaps? He didn't know.
But he was going to arrive. And soon.
A/N: Of course, like any fic writer out there, I'll post the customary line: Read & Review!! If you liked what you read, at the very least, leave a review. It sucks if there are many hits and few reviews. But it sucks more if there are no hits, of course.
Note: The girl's identity is not really an OC. As I've said at the beginning, this would be explained further on future chapters. And yeah, I know, from what it looks like at the summary, this is going to be one of those angst-ridden YurixWolfram conflict fics. Rest assured it's not. There's still conflict but not that much angst.