At long last... I've already featured the story years ago but removed it due to the story's haste and unintelligibility. I plan this to take long enough for the plot to finish (hackneyed I think); so I'm sorry for any misfortune that might occur to the one reading this note. "Days of being wild" is a reference to Wong Kar-Wai. Reviews/flames welcome, as always.
CARNIVAL TOWN Version 1.1
In which Sendoh Decides to Prove the Seer Wrong & the Story Starts
Nighttime furthered the playfulness that resided within the carnival; cloudy-eyed for him, with sufficed breeze to set anew the muted demeanor of the spike-haired lad. A carousel rushed circular by his side as he strides along, surrounded by the seemingly monotonous afterglow of neon lights. Faint are the noises from the animated children whispering through his earshot, and the chauvinistic boisterousness from his teammates made everything an everyday experience. A good 'ole fair, he thought.
"Uhm... guys, I'm not into this thing..." Akira Sendoh took pride in his skepticism as he pointed out the gypsy-hued tent. The metaphysic justifications for the order of human existence can only get too picturesque for his own preference; he was more convinced that it's just another pleasure for the natural impulses of human thought to thrive in.
"Do you know the word killjoy? Sheesh," Koshino's curse-toned voice was no surprise for Sendoh.
"Besides, Sendoh-san, that seer got us all checked. It's unfair if you get exempted," Hikoichi added. Looking at the whole Ryonan basketball members, Akira Sendoh sighed in surrender.
"But I don't wanna squander—"
"And implying your thriftiness, eh?" Koshino pests himself, handing a couple of bills from his pocket, a smile escaping from the spike-haired.
"It's just a few minutes, Sendoh." Uozumi said, pushing the Ryonan ace towards the neon-dressed tent of velvet textiles.
Seconds more and he's inside the abode. Unwieldy candles glowed faintly, and the room smelt of lavender wax; an all-too-familiar place he got used to from the movies. The feeling interests him to say the least, hinting himself of disquiet for the first time. He expected a wrinkled geezer with locks reaching unbelievable heights, a striking mole and cosmetics too overwhelming for those antiquated skin. His whisper turns into reverberation.
"Hello?"
A slight rustle in front of him, a step backwards; trying to sidestep the uneasiness.
"Sit."
And he obliged; a dictatorial fiber of a spirit manifested as voice. His anxiety bellows, but a tinge of delight resides in him as well; no one in the history of his life ever told of his self-assurance's defeat, until now, and how it works wonders in him was something he cannot intuitively think of.
So the woman wasn't a physicality's threat, an average bore. Physical details are hazy but he never cared at the least. "What d'ya want?" she asks, and gentle at that, too.
"Uhm... a reading?"
"I was asking what kind of reading you want,"
Of course it was. "I dunno. I'm... quite not a fan of this honestly,"
"I know," the woman said more as a statement than an inquisitive mind nourished by an answer. She nods.
Where did the 'know' come from? Or was it just his imagination? Seers are more or less psychoanalysts; a word escaping their mouth hypnotizes their victims and haunts the inner guilt. A vague protestation and the victim's hopes are intertwined by the fact that every seer would say anything to please the one with the dough. He feels betrayed by this epistemic glory.
She looks at the crystal ball on the other hand and seems to notice the growing impatience of the youngster. The lad stares at the unscathed sphere, a pesky vermin he'd like to break.
Groupthink was a much better choice, he realized. Another curse from Koshino would literally burn his ears.
She then looks up; gaze scribbled, understood only with blankness. Sendoh felt like it was infinity; he looks behind him as a gesture of mockery, and his gentle smile was a good disguise.
"Do you know... transcendence? Like you have an affinity with the universe?"
He's voiceless, distressed. "Eh?"
"In your life... did you ever feel happy?"
He smiles, harking back at the days of being wild. A man who hops around into people's lives and the intricacies he calls human interaction; the ways he owns them, the ways he gets possessed by a rapture expressed through physical gesticulations. "Of course!"
He deemed she got a wrong answer. "Happy enough to make you think you could die right there and there?"
"Uhm... of course not. But I'm happy nonetheless." What was her point?
"Akira Sendoh... you're not perfect but you're excellent at what you do,"
"I guess so," he says with an obstinate look. How on earth did she know his name anyway?
"How does it feel?"
"Huh?"
"How does it feel to be excellent in what you do?"
"Fulfilling perhaps. I actually don't think about it." He realized it was going to be a debate too open-ended that he would surrender through agreement. Like the rest of them.
"Is it lonely to be too high?"
"Too high?"
"To look down and watch others from your pedestal?"
"I..."
"You're a clown, Akira Sendoh."
He was the perfect cloak as he smiles, yet again. "I'm not."
"You smile because you want to make a fool of yourself,"
"You say so," he mutters in amusement. But what was the rousing dynamic which has reeled his head just now?
"...because you're wandering alone,"
"I have family and my teammates,"
"...because you want to go home with something to hold on to," she says as the spike-haired stood up, trying to be a benevolent creature despite the narrowed eyes. If it was a war, he's a soldier with thrusts of insulting knives that coated him bloodied; daggers that are even lightyears away from him, piercing his bones that even a scream is not tantamount to the pain.
"...because you're lonely."
He places the bills by the table, walking towards the egress. He swivels one last time to see her liar of a face, but the prophet of fib was already gone.
His pallid shirt seemed soaked. He thinks it was from the practice earlier. By the time his body flexed outside, a plaster of smirk and the coolness of his mood have fooled his acquaintances anew.
"How did it go?" Hikoichi asked.
"There was no one, I just sat in there waiting," Sendoh said, calm as usual.
"I don't feel well. A raincheck, okay," he continued. As the Ryonan ace player promenaded en route for the carnival's exit, Akira Sendoh's silence was deafening; none of his teammates knew what really happened though they were satisfied at the upshot.
As he walks along a feeling of antipathy surges down the street like a ravenous ocean. The pavements gets too narrower for him, and more than the feeling of hostility towards the Freudian oracle was a faith too bad to for his self-assurance to believe, pushing those familiar words away. Hands on his pockets and his pace increases. Of course, he was one of those victims he referred to beforehand, the unlucky ones who mixed reality with wishful thinking. But what was his pipe-dream anyway?
Akira Sendoh is a composite of miniatures of excellence; he never needed anyone to tutor him, he never needed anyone to score a point for his team. He never needed anyone to cultivate the requisites of the body; his prowess can make him conquer even the boundless prances and charms of them all. But what was his pipe-dream, granted there was one in the first place?
He was never lonely. He earns for himself emotional safety. Hours passed, avoiding his house and he kept walking, the memory haunting the blue-eyed youngster of distant coolness and self-buoyancy.
Let's see who's lonely.
Akira Sendoh's stoicism in the picturesque mysticism has led him into a happenstance to be cynic about his skepticism; but he's still convinced with the buoyancy of his so-called assurance that lonely are the ones who are wet blankets. A striking thought now appears; an experiment of sort, to see if he was indeed a composite of clowns who made a town out of his body, his psyche.
On the benches of the town's park and the carnival man of smiles of cobalt eyes stared meticulously at a certain Shohoku lass. She's more infamous for her obsession over his raven-haired rival than for being a bright student. To be happy with her, to deflate the fox's ego. Yes, that girl; another body to be conquered.
"Akagi Haruko right?"
"Yes,"
"I'm Akira Sendoh."
tbc.