twilight, an eidolon
twilight: 1. the soft diffused light from the sky when the sun is below the horizon. ... 4. a state of uncertainty, vagueness, or gloom.
eidolon: 1. a phantom; apparition. 2. an ideal
chapter one. void
The clock barely has time to toll five o'clock before he wakes suddenly, forcefully, a good hour before he's supposed to. He sits up in bed, panting slightly, his half-asleep eyes feverish with sepulchred visions, his hair tousled and damp. There is a pallor about his face that doesn't seem healthy, a pallor that can't be explained, incredibly, by the six-inch accumulation of snow and ice that is freezing the life out of everybody he knows. He runs his hands through his hair, feeling the astonishing heat that rises out of his scalp, slightly surprised at the coldness of his fingers as he buries his head in his hands.
The grandfather clock in the foyer is chiming, calling out the time softly to the sleep-ridden mausoleum. The deep rhythm soothes him, the steady beat of five-in-the-morning calming his rapidly beating heart, ferrying him safely away from the same nightmare that has been disturbing his sleep for the last nineteen years, and grounding him to his reality: the nightmare that he has been living for the same amount of time.
Despite the fact that he has another hour before the world expects him in its midst, he gets up anyway. Long years of experience have taught him well; that it is futile to attempt to revisit the land of slumber after a jarring nightmare. He peels back the covers and slips out of bed, his bare feet padding silently on the carpeted floor out of habit rather than out of fear of waking his wife, enviably luxurious in her restful sleep.
Without much thought, he slips into his usual routine, splashing ice-cold water on his face, showering quickly, swinging into the kitchen for a bite. He does this all in the half-dark, never bothering to turn on the main lights. Strangely enough, it is now, in the quiet morning, so early it might almost be considered late, that he feels most alive. He concedes that his existence is paltry, fleeting, vampiric almost, and if his mother could fathom the depth of the indifference that drives his life, she would be at once appalled and empathetic. Because she knows what it feels like, to live without really living, to slave for false idols, to be emotionally incapable of real feeling because, well...
He sits down with a cup of black coffee, seeking solace in its bitter strength, trusting it to jar him into complete wakefulness. In this transitory period between waking and dawn, he allows himself to be honest, allows himself to dwell on just how much he hates his life. He hates everything about it, from the monotonous swell of his grandiose and glamourous job right down to his wife and simpering in-laws. He hates the country he lives in, hates the constant swell of attention and bright lights and insincerity that is a fixed variable in his life. At times, he wishes he could go back home, back to Hong Kong, where in the midst of the hustle and bustle, he feels calm and whole. But the Elders won't allow him to do so, and neither will his wife. It is in Europe and North America that the future of the company lies, the Elders argue, and his wife echoes their sentiments. This is home, she means to tell him, though she can't quite articulate this in her constant search for glamour and fame (but he understands her well enough after nineteen years of marriage), this is where his – no, correction - their two kids have made their place in the world. At which point he snorts inwardly, because his eighteen-year-old son and fifteen-year-old daughter are far too young to have made a place for themselves anywhere, let alone in a jungle as convoluted and inconsistent as the world.
It definitely doesn't feel like home.
Precisely at six, he hears the telltale sound of the mailman jiggling the lid of the mailbox. He waits for a minute, until he is sure that the man has left his doorstep, before opening the door and relieving the box of its contents. As he scatters the wares onto the foyer floor, he notes a small parcel, unremarkably packaged in brown corrugated cardboard and straw-like string. It is addressed to him, Mr. Syaoran Li, the address and details printed boldly on a peeling white sticker. After a moment, he remembers the book he ordered and, after quickly organizing the day's post on the dining room table, he moves into the library and opens the parcel.
Contrary to his wife's beliefs, it is not a volume of investing advice written by some bigshot broker (as if he needed it). Instead, a glossy hardcover slips into his hands, of medium thickness and abstract shadowy design. The title reads Broken Mirrors, the author is some psychiatrist, a Dr. Saori Lee, whose contribution to the literary world is a detailed narration chronicling the onset of depression and the science behind it. Ironically, he believes this is the one thing he needs. Not the depression. He doesn't need a book to tell him that he's depressed. But he needs a break from the taut artificial optimism of everyday life, a relief from pretending day in and day out, that he is the ideal man, the ideal husband, the ideal father. He is tired of living up to everyone's expectations but his own, yet he can't remember the last time he had wishes of his own. His memory divides as he remembers his childhood, somehow recalling a childhood that was as bleak as the rest of his life yet simultaneously, filled with breaths of innocence and colour. He remembers disconnected things, feathers, flying, red-backed cards, green eyes...
These fragmented images haunt him in his nightmares, making sense only in the warped twilight of sleep. He thinks he might be revisiting something of his past he has forced himself to forget. Something mysterious that has inexplicably, to this very day, contributed to the heavy burden he carries in his chest. Something that is responsible for the hollowness he feels every time his wife wraps her arms around him, or as he watches his son and sees the seed of himself in his teenage features. But the notion is fanciful, absurd almost. It is fantasy, romanticism that doesn't belong in this monotonous life.
As he puts the book away and heads back to his bedroom, he sees that the lights are on in his daughter's room, and he remembers that she has school today. It is the start of her second semester in the tenth grade, he notes unconsciously. For a moment he feels guilty, for being so absentminded and indifferent a father. But truth be told, if there's one person in the world that he cares about, it's her. At fifteen, she hasn't won any tournaments, nor has she ever placed in any dean's list. She has never topped her class, ever. She doesn't visit him at the office like her older brother did, she doesn't ask him for an early internship or a summer desk job. She is, in all respects, perfectly ordinary, perfectly unaffected by the weight of her surname. And for this, he loves her and envies her. It is in her that he sees the future. It is in her that he vests all of his hope.
He prays everyday that she does not succumb to her fate like her brother did. Like he did.
Because she is the embodiment of everything he needs. Innocence. Sincerity. And hope.
He needs hope.
disclaimer: Card Captor Sakura isn't mine. It's the property of CLAMP et al.
a/n: This is me drabbling and experimenting. Either you get it, or you don't.
This will probably be continued in short bursts here and there.
Questions? Comments? Ideas? Let me know.
-Celestiana