Summary: Ema leaves the Asahina household.
So... Green-Eyed... as much as it's begging to be written, my muse for it is in the gutters, and this plot bunny has been bugging me for practically months now. Green-Eyed wouldn't go anywhere till this has been written, so, yeah! I'd appreciate reviews. I just might continue this. Until then, though, this story will always be marked as complete, because any sequels or continuations are up in the air.
Also, to those of you following Green-Eyed, there's a poll on my profile for the pairing. Please let me know what you'd like to see!
halcyon pursuit.
Her leaving is sudden. They don't expect it. Her father didn't expect it. Her friends didn't expect it.
Hell, she didn't expect it herself.
She can't tell what the final straw was. Perhaps it was Kaname's shameless flirting. Or Tsubaki's constant touching. Or Fuuto's endless nagging. Whatever it was, all she knows is that she needs an out. She can't be suffocated much longer; it's like she's gasping for air, suspended underwater as sharks swim in her blood. Play with her heart.
Juli is nervous. He hates the idea of Ema being on her own, yet... he can see the dull in her eyes, the sadness in her gaze. And he knows it's what she needs.
So it happens one night. She's legally an adult at the tender age of eighteen (still not quite old enough to handle her brothers wanting to be her lover). She calls her father, her stepmother, her teachers, and her friends, and fills a duffle bag with a few outfits they'd granted upon her. And she creeps downstairs, peeking around the corner to make sure Tsubaki or Azusa aren't around "practicing their lines" (or, "ready to harass her").
The coast is clear. From her skirt, she withdraws a small, white paper and tacks it to the board with her brothers' names on it. Completely informal— in fact, it's the back of her last math assignment as a third year —but its words, written in scared, shaky writing, can bring down the sky.
Ukyo wakes up first.
Had there been anyone else in the kitchen, it would have been a strange sight to see the well-groomed lawyer trudge down the stairs at noon, clad in pajamas and sporting disheveled hair. Nevertheless, he rubs his eyes and pushes his glasses up his nose, setting to work on a nice, hot breakfast for his brothers and beloved sister. His lips curl up slightly just at the thought of her.
He's carrying the last plate— hers —to the table, making sure the arrangement on it is pristine when he spots the small slip hanging on the board. Curious, he makes his way to it, eyes skimming over it, then widening.
The crashing sound of plates is what wakes up the rest of the Asahina brothers that day.
"This can't be real," Masaomi murmurs. There are indentations along the edges of the paper shaped like fingernails and knuckles where each brother grasped the paper to the near point of ripping. All of them had assembled, called together for an emergency family meeting. The tensions lay heavy in the room.
"Maa-kun," Wataru moans in despair. "Read it aloud, read it aloud! I want to know what happened!"
Masaomi's gentle voice is for once choked, hoarse, and painful. His breathing labors as he looks around the circle. Hikaru's frown is small but pressed deep into his face. Tsubaki's head is in his hands. Subaru seems to have gone numb.
I'm sorry it had to be this way. Know that I love all of you, but never in the way that you want me to.
This is for the best. Please don't worry about me— I'll be fine. Please don't look for me, either. I need this just as much as you do. And I know what you're thinking, but you do need this. It's important to me that you all move on, that you forget about me and pretend that I never existed. This is the way it's supposed to be.
As for me, I intend on continuing on with my path. Of course, without the same opportunities I had while with you, my loving family, I know that there will be some changes. I truly do hope that I will find it in myself to be just as successful as I would have been when you had carved the way. But in the meantime, I'll just focus on the small steps.
One day, we might cross paths again. And I hope by that time, you've found loving spouses and I know what I'll do in life. But until then, please promise me that you'll take care of yourselves and find it within you to move on.
Your Loving Sister,
Ema Hinata
Not even a breath can be heard in the small congregate. And that's when Fuuto jumps to his feet, teeth bared as he snarls at Ukyo, "You're a lawyer! Do something about this! This can't be le—!"
"Legal?" Ukyo sighs, seeming drained of light as he sprawls across the couch and swirls a glass of sake in his hand. "She's eighteen. As long as we don't pay her money, then she's completely free of us and we're obliged to respect her wishes."
There's a chorus of growls across the room before Azusa sits up straight. "If we don't pay her anything?"
Ukyo nods slowly.
"She's not stupid. What if she took money?"
It seems as though someone's sucked the air out of the lungs of every brother, and they peel open a safe... but everything is intact. Hope crushed once more, they desperately scramble for ideas.
"How could she have known?" Azusa whispers.
"You said it yourself," Natsume's bitter reply comes. "She's not stupid."
There is quiet again, and the gravity of the situation begins to weigh down on them. Tsubaki's face folds into a soundless cry, Iori's is twisted in mourning, Yusuke's moan is like a ghost.
"Why?" The voice sounds like each of theirs: hollow, lonely, painful. No brother can tell who it is that speaks. Maybe it's himself. "Why would she leave us?"
The question they'd each like to know.
Six months truly doesn't do much for Ema.
Without money, she couldn't afford to pay for a dorm at Meiji. So she took up a second job, using some of the money she'd earned and received as a high schooler to rent out a small apartment, then applying for a job at a restaurant. Admittedly, the pay is nowhere near as good as what she could have had, and she has less money in her pocket having to pay for a roof over her head, but she can't find it in herself to regret leaving.
It's a lovely spring morning. She's always loved the spring.
She's admiring the pink petal snow outside when the pair enters. One is a man with salt and pepper hair, and his son, with hair like soft caramel and eyes of summer grass. One of her coworkers seats them and walks by Ema, pushing her towards the table with a grin and a barely concealed whisper:
"He's cute!"
Ema's blushing as she arrives at their table, and she catches onto little snippets of their conversation.
"...contract ended, and she's not applying for another one. We need to find a replacement—"
"Hello," Ema peeps, and both pairs of eyes turn to her in shock, roving her up and down in a way that makes her flush even more. "Is there anything I can start you off with to drink today?"
The caramel-haired boy and the dark-haired man look at each other and their lips pull into a grin.
Their names are Miyamoto Yasuo and Miyamoto Yuki. They're a father/son designer duo, both of them scouting for models and preparing Yuki to take over the company; Ema thinks she's heard of them somewhere, a small pit in the back of her mind filled with slate hair and blue irises and a promise to return.
The two sit her down immediately, waving away her manager and immediately informing her of their situation. Her head is spinning; she's always been primed to believe that nothing would fall into her lap on a silver platter, but here she is, being scouted by a modeling agency and wringing her hands on the table.
She'd be a fool to say no. She thinks on it a moment; what would her father say? Her brothers?
But her answer comes to her like a bolt of lightning. She wanted to be free— it was, after all, her reason for leaving. She wanted to spread her wings and push her boundaries. It seems fate is giving her a perfect pitch. She bites her lip, and nods at the offer.
Yuki is far friendlier than she would have expected a designer to be. His caramel hair curls around his face in wisps, his green eyes bright whenever he talks to her. His laughter is infectious, loud and unabashed, and it sends everyone else spiraling into chuckles. He helps her ease into the modeling business easily, and she lives freely and on the edge with him.
When she's eighteen, she becomes his model.
When she's nineteen, she becomes his muse.
When she's twenty, she becomes his wife.
It's a small ceremony, and her father walks her down the aisle, moving to sit with her beautiful stepmother. Both are sworn to secrecy. Her friends in the agency, gorgeous models that help her recognize her own loveliness, cry tears of joy and jump up and down screaming as Yuki leans down to kiss Ema, soft and sweet and reverent. Juli sniffs the air happily, gorging himself on the delicious meal. Her new father-in-law pecks her on the cheek before the first dance. Her new husband smears cake on her face. She laughs.
In the back of her mind, she prays that her thirteen uninvited men have shared the same laughter as well.
Asahina Fuuto spits out his breakfast one morning.
Life had not been kind to the Asahina brothers since the abandonment of their sister. Even three years after her leaving, her presence is still felt in her untouched room, the note still painstakingly tacked back to the board.
They'd all tried to find her despite her wishes. For months they searched for any trace of her— any one of their search histories would have the words "Hinata Ema" or "Asahina Ema" in them. But she'd covered her tracks well; they'd searched high and wide to find her, yet there wasn't even a trace.
Ukyo still turns around, asking her to make dinner before the words die on his tongue. Louis still brings his curling iron downstairs before realizing there is no soft, long brown hair for him to curl.
So it's a shock to the twelfth son when he finds his big sister tucked within the pages of a magazine, albeit on a full-page spread with MIYAMOTO— a highly coveted designer —proudly emblazoned at the bottom of the page.
It's an advertisement for a perfume, and it's certainly more risque than he ever thought her capable of. Her eyes are lined with black kohl, her hair teased into a messy mane, and she's wearing all-black attire— strappy shoes and translucent lace pantyhose under a short leather dress. It's a full body shot; her back is to the camera, long legs and posture squared, and she's twisted around from the waist so her top half is a profile view. The sensual pose is almost... naughty with the riding crop she grips in front of her.
And to top it all off, a smirk tugs at those painted red lips as she looks at the camera from the corner of her eye.
It takes Fuuto a moment to realize that the groaning noise is coming from him and that that pressure is... oh, God.
His eyes flicker around the room in panic as his face grows red. He bends over the magazine with a whimper— the perfume's slogan, "Play with Desire" stares him right in the face —and silently preaches thanks that he is alone. His brothers would never let him live that down.
He takes a few steadying breaths and finally recovers enough to pull up a laptop and look up "MIYAMOTO: Play with Desire model." The groaning noise is back, but it's more of a choke.
It's his sister. And the perfume ad isn't the only one she's done.
"What's that?"
He jumps at the voice and whirls around, Yusuke's mouth parted in surprise. Then he whispers, his eyes growing misty. "You... you found her."
Fuuto's teeth clench. "Go away."
But Yusuke's already grabbed at the laptop, eyes shining in happiness. "You actually found her! How did you...?"
"Give it back, idiot," Fuuto huffs and pull the laptop away, unable to tear his eyes off her fluid form. "You can't tell anybody about this."
"Ne, tell anybody about what?" Tsubaki asks curiously, and the two of them jump.
"Stop that!" Fuuto demands, but Tsubaki's seen. The laptop is ripped from his hands again, his brother's violet eyes wide. Joyous shock crosses over his face.
Naturally, Fuuto wouldn't have wanted to tell anyone. If he were the only one who knew, he could come home with her one day with her in his arms and savor the shock on his brothers' faces. But Tsubaki's already clamoring upstairs to show Azusa, and despite Fuuto's vain efforts to chase after and stop him, the brothers are eventually gathered in the living room.
"It's her," Ukyo confirms. "But how? How could we not have seen?"
"Ema Hinata—" Kaname reads off the screen, "—is a Japanese model best known for her work with MIYAMOTO. Look, it says here that she became active three years ago as a runway model. Eventually, Miyamoto Yuki decided to put her in the ads."
It's so strange to be reading about her," Iori murmurs. "Three years of searching and now we have an entire web page about her life. Why did Miyamoto put her in now?"
Yusuke grunts and tugs the laptop from Kaname. He opens his mouth to read.
No sound comes out.
"Yusuke?" Masaomi asks in concern. "Are you alright? Yusuke?"
But Yusuke is furiously typing something. When he's finished, he falls back into the couch and sinks into it, tears streaming down his face.
Kaname takes back the laptop. Ice creeps up his body and into his heart when he reads what Yusuke has searched: "Miyamoto Ema."
The first picture there is in a news article, one of a beautiful brown-haired girl and a green-eyed boy. They're lost in each other, clearly in love and happy. His fingers are under her chin, tilting her face up to whisper into her ear. Serene smiles play on both their faces, and his hand rests gently on her waist while hers tangle in his hair.
The ice grips Kaname's heart when he reads the caption.
Today marks the first anniversary of designer Miyamoto Yuki and Hinata Ema.
Lunch is silent and short. Most of them have excused themselves before they finish to mourn what could have been.
Rain begins to pour outside, a song of lament.
Across the country, twenty-one-year-old Ema prepares for another photo shoot.
The afternoon is bright with the singing sun.
Her husband wraps his strong arms around her waist, murmuring kisses into her neck and she almost purrs with contentment. For a moment, she wonders what it would be like to have another's arms around her, what it would be like to have another pair of lips on her skin. What it would be like to have stayed.
But his kisses trail to her ear, and the words he whispers there make her sigh and melt back into him. No, she wouldn't trade him for anyone else.
She is happy. She is free.
end part one.
For those of you confused about "gray hair and blue irises and a promise to return": in the novels, Iori was a model.
Anyway, I obviously love empowering Ema. It's a thing of mine that really bugged me in the anime. I never really intended for all of you to get to know Yuki at all, and this ended a bit more abruptly than I planned, so if any of you want me to continue this or write a companion story, message me!
Please review, and don't forget to vote on my profile for the pairing of Green-Eyed.