Golden Eyes
Saena Mogami is haunted, and Kyoko is guilty of being born. Rated T for underlying theme.
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She traced an invisible line down the window, feeling the coldness of the glass and imagining it was the way the clouds beyond it would feel. They were a dirty-grey color, darkening on one side, as though a dark creature crept over them. Even the pink brilliance of the other side could not lighten her mood, for the sun was setting, and the winds were moving in.
'It looks like rain.'
Saena Mogami took one last look at a golden glimmer and flinched, pulling the shade down. As she did
so, sound seem to return, taking her out of her thoughts.
"This isn't what I wanted..." A thump! of something hitting the carpeted ground.
"...think Papa will be there to meet us?"
"Don't throw your crackers!"
Saena closed her eyes and lowered her head, rubbing at her brow, a muscle under her eye twitching as a young mother snapped at her small child, who began to shriek. A stewardness began to speak in that forced cheerful tone of someone at their limit, someone about to snap and lose all politeness.
And the plane hadn't even taken off yet.
Saena was in the last business class row, sitting by herself, too close to the economy class for her liking and wishing she could afford first-class. Someday, but not this day.
Today, her suit was well-made, and a flattering cut for her somewhat angular, aging figure, making her look long and lean. But it did not have the brand name she wanted on the tag, and the long-wearing quality that was normally wasted on the type of women who never dared wear an outfit too many times
anyway for fear of being labeled "so last season".
Today, her beauty products were decent enough to cover creeping lines, and highlight her cheekbones, and even out her complexion. But they were not the best; no, they did not give her natural looking beauty.
Today, she would walk in stylish-but not fashion-magazine favorite-heels to a business meeting and try desperately to prove her worth and earn herself a top place in her company, before time passed her by and the younger woman began to sneak their underserving way into her coveted spot. Intellect, she could compete with, but not those who slept their way up the corporate ladder. Not those who were born into the right families.
'What do those little tramps know about running a business anyway?' Granted, there was no particular face to put to this feeling, but Saena was not blind to the fact that the older leaders were being slowly replaced by their sons or grandsons-many of whom lacked...discretion. She had to shine before this merger happened, make herself indispensible. Nobody would care she was given this chance too late,
too unfairly late.
Nobody would care circumstances had robbed her of so many chances...
Her manicured fingertips dug into her armrests for several seconds.
'I can handle this, I can endure. That is what I do best.'
But, she decided twenty minutes into the flight, chemical assistance wasn't cheating too much. For Kami's sake, the pills had been prescribed to her for a reason. She tossed one back with a sip of free champagne. Blessed fuzziness began to engulf her. Her lashes fluttered down, and what thoughts passed through her head became vivid images in her mind's eye. Golden eyes...
'I don't want to dream about that...' she protested, but it was too late.
Memories played in slow-motion, a movie run backwards that she couldn't stop.
"Mama, look at me!"
"Mama, look!"
"Mama..."
"Mogami-san, your daughter..."
"Mogami-san, it will be over in a few hours..."
"Mogami-san, I'm sorry..."
"Mogami-san, do you want to press charges?"
"Mogami-san, it looks like rain."
Saena's eyes rolled beneath her lids, unable to escape this self-imposed sleep, and the torture it put her through. Her body went tense in its seat, but there was no one to wake her.
"Do you want to stay tonight?"
Beautiful golden eyes, twinkling in the soft lamp light. She had wanted to stay, oh yes.
Why was she remembering this?
He put his hand on hers-her! Of all girls to chose! She was painfully reserved, her
intellect and vocabularly keeping her firmly out of range of popularity. She was just smart enough to be social awkward, not a star. She was pretty enough not to be plain, but not beautiful. Her only redeeming quality was the fact that no one knew anything about her, in her utter shyness.
'I don't want to remember this...'
"We can finish the project later. Call your parents, tell them you are staying tonight."
She should have said no. She should have walked through the growing storm if she had to. But having lied to her parents to come over, to see him alone, lying to herself that her grade was all that compelled her, she could not call her parents. Her mother was without the car tonight, and would want Inoue-san's father or mother to drive her home. But neither was there, that night.
"Mogami-san, you're cold..." Such concern in that rich, low voice, and warm arms drawing her unresisting form closer.
"I'm always cold..."
"Why do you like being alone? It's so much warmer with another by your side."
"You're very warm...Inoue-san."
"Teiji."
"Teiji...kun."
How stupid! How presumptious she was, to assume he had a true interest in her. That kind of love was for fairytales and shoujo manga. He has noticed her, all right, but there was no love in his pursuit of her innocence. He barely maintained his falsely pleasant facade past her few stammered comments of resistance, getting to the true purpose of his invitation.
"Teiji...kun. Please...please, don't! I'm not...no, stop!"
He had not stopped. He had not apologized, even pretended it was passion gone too far. His true interest was in the bet he had won, through the most foul means. He didn't even care that she was too traumatized to do her end of the work for their project. But what did a rich boy care of a failing grade or two?
Disgraced, she'd wanted to move, tormented by his smug, sneering face and the horrible rumors, even before she'd discovered the lingering effects of that evening. Then the reality of her falsehood that night came out, as did her unwelcome news. The choice had been taken from her a month later. Mogami Shiiro was not a forgiving man, and the damage her "reputation" might do to his own was unforgiveable.
"You will endure," her mother had said to her on the evening left.
"Mama..." Saena whimpered, clutching at her sweater with one hand, the other tremblingly grasping a suitcase handle. It was starting to rain that cold May evening.
"There are only two things left I can give you, Sa-chan." The childhood nick-name, as much as the tears in Naiki's eyes had brought an answering sheen to her daughter's. The woman shook Saena's hand off of her and snuck her own into an inner pocket, drawing out a small purse and pressing it into Saena's coat pocket. "The other thing is advice: Don't let anyone see you cry, Saena. Make your face a wall they cannot read, hard as stone. If they think you are tough they won't try to test you. Only you will know how you really feel."
Saena had walked away biting her lip until it bled, until her eyes went flat and unexpressive and dry. She became the chilliest, most effective secretary of a new business. She worked herself to the bone, earning herself a chance to take online classes on the company dollar. She took minimal time off late one winter, calling her old classmate, who was in a similar situation.
Fuwa Hina too worked day and night and had attended special classes in the evening. Hina joined her in the hospital, drove her to their inn after it was over. Hina held the little girl in her arms, taking turns with her own child, born only a six months or so ago. She'd been in Saena's class because Saena was taking the lamaze classes early, before her school courses began. She wished she could've afforded an abortion with a doctor she trusted to be both safe and discreet, once she'd laid eyes on her newborn daughter's face.
Hina cuddled the girl, cooed to her, smiled at her. She'd tried once to encourage Saena to do the same. But Saena had stared coldly down on the infant and said only one thing:
"She has his eyes."
She has not pressed charges, as her only friend has suggested. She had not bothered to try. And now there was no trying left in her for her little girl, named after the area she was born in-Kyoto—when Saena found herself too uninterested to try harder to reach for a name with more meaning. Kyoko she was.
She had his eyes.
She had his sickening touchy-feely-ness, her little fingers grasping. She had his flair for drawing attention to herself with grandiose gestures and stories, bouncing about on the sidewalks declaring herself princess this, that, and the other, until Saena had gotten her home and paddled her a good one for misbehaving and standing out like that. But the passion for attention still burned in her eyes, still lingered in her voice, and Saena hated it.
She was just like her father.
Like him, she latched on to the most popular kid in her grade, who happened to be Fuwa Shotaro, son of
Hina and Kenabe. Like her father, she was full of over-the-top pleasantries and sweet words towards the object of her attention, and Saena had no doubt that if the boy had given into her, she'd have dumped him in a heartbeat, skipping away with her hand to her mouth and a triumphant laugh.
Her heart would clench angrily. 'She's just like him.'
She worked every second that she could to have an excuse to be away from the offspring of that poisonous man, and held herself watchful and wary, awaiting the day Kyoko would turn comptemptous eyes on her mother and declare herself above Saena and walk away as her father had.
Until the day she decided she would do it first.
She didn't fall for the tears, and kept on going. She'd transferred guardianship to the Fuwas and was fully free to go.
She'd thought those golden eyes were long behind her.
Saena opened her eyes, in more turmoil than when she'd closed them, when the flight attendant announced their arrival. She stood, smoothed her outfit, grabbed her purse. On the way down the aisle, she glanced over at a discarded magazine's cover and immediately wished she hadn't. Those
eyes...they haunted her still.
The confidently in-control expression, the regal bearing, those golden eyes.
Kyoko was the very image of her father.
She faltered once, wondering if Teiji would ever know, or care, about their child. Then she remembered his expression on the day he'd dismissed her, slamming the front door of his home in her face and telling her to ask the other guys she'd slept around with about "her" kid. He'd known there was no other; the meaning was clear.
Teiji didn't care. Well, fine. Neither did she then. He would not inflict this child upon her.
Now Kyoko herself haunted Saena, her image everywhere, inescapable, tormenting her.
It would be a long time before Saena could her eyes and not see those faces in her mind. Sadly, it was the day she went to sleep and awoke no more. Kyoko, not being listed as an emergency contact, was not informed of her mother's aneurysm, and was left to wonder the rest of her life-until she forcibly put it out of her mind-what she had ever done wrong.
She had committed no crime other than being born, and bearing the second most beautiful pair of golden eyes Mogami Saena had ever seen.
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A/N: Clearly a rather dark fic. It came to me one day when I was contemplating why Saena was so cold to such a sweet child, and it occurred to me that it might actually have nothing to do with Kyoko's "lack of perfection" as she thought of it, but more to do with her absent father. Of course, the guy could've just died and Saena walled herself off in grief, but this seemed somehow more likely...