(Author's Note: This story is a sequel to "Dreaming in Color". If you have not read it, you may wish to do so, as many occurences lead up to this point and it helps to be familiar with those events. This story will have quite a bit of fluff, although nothing to push it over the edge into "scary" or "explicit" territory. The story starts with Ryou and Ichigo married. He is about 26 at this point while she is 24. Reviews are greatly appreciated, although this chapter is mostly just a short introduction and summary of what happened between the two stories; to let you all know I didn't forget about this. Thanks.)
Monochromatic.
I. Introduction - outlines.
I must have awoken sometime around 5AM. It was still dark outside, with the moon casting a faint glow over the bedsheets and highlighting the soft features on the face across from me. I let my breath come out slowly, reaching my bare arm across her to push into the small of her back and bring her closer to me. Or me to her; I couldn't tell which it was.
I knew that she was still sleeping due to her occasional quiet murmurings. They never made much sense other than to alert me to the fact that she was indeed asleep and that I should just let her stay that way.
There are a lot of things about Ichigo Shirogane that the average person doesn't know. At first glance she seems the stereotypical friendly - but stubborn - ditz who does stupid things to make people smile and who has a strong sense of justice. Surely, she was not a girl worth taking seriously... However, in the past eleven years she has proven me wrong. Horribly wrong. So that now I can appreciate just how amazing a woman can be, whether or not she has special powers.
Mew Ichigo was never completely forgotten, however, she became like a memory or a short-lived dream. A private success in the back of my mind. After all, as Mew Ichigo, the girl sleeping beside me had managed to not only destroy the last Chimera, a reminder of my own personal nightmares, but she had managed to set the two of us free from the Iriomote Wildcat DNA that had once resided in us. With that the Mew Project had come to an end. An end I could take pride in, and one that I felt my parents could be proud of as well. That chapter of my life was over, and the girls and I could return to living normal lives - and as it turned out, those lives resided closely to one another. Ichigo Momomiya, who had once hoped of becoming a rising star and idol, became sensible and decided that she would much rather get a real job that was closer to real people. As it was, she married and became an elementary school teacher while coming into Cafe Mew Mew in the evenings to take up her old job as a waitress.
I, on the other hand, had not given up on my big (and often times selfish) dreams for the fields of biotechnology and genetics. I soon decided that I'd rather return to doing independent research and so left my teaching position at the University of Tokyo to make time for the necessary experiments. Experiments that had for the most part turned out to be huge disappointments. I was frustrated. But Keiichiro returned from another dig in Africa, and Masaya Aoyama, having decided that studying and doing research in regards to Red Data Animals was his calling, joined the bandwagon. So, the three of us decided to undertake one of these dreams of mine together. A dream that would take us far from Tokyo and the people closest to us. A dream I would later come to regret.
Ichigo stirred then, thick lashes fluttering to reveal warm chocolate-colored eyes. A small smile graced her lips in her half-conscious state as she nestled into me, resting her head against my bare chest and kissing it delicately.
"Go back to sleep, Ryou..." she murmured. I couldn't tell if her eyes were still open or not from her postion, but the feel of her skin against mine was pleasant and somehow relaxing. That alone began to lull me back under the spell of unconsciousness.
"Okay," I complied, shutting my eyes.
That was the last night I spent with my wife.
