Crimson Ribbon Girl
Essay 1
Well. Hello all, and welcome to my Naoko series, Crimson Ribbon Girl. I decided our Naoko-chan needed more fanfic dedicated to her. So here we go.
Recently, I began to comtemplate something: Everything we write about what a character thinks and feels is, in some way, about us. We are the ones who feel suicidal, so Meiling becomes suicidal. We are the ones who feel like crying, so Sakura cries. When we feel betrayed, Yue feels betrayed. When we feel like we're wearing masks, Tomoyo takes off her mask. We control the feelings of the characters, so the characters feel like we do.
I'm not going to add a sarcastic rider about the prevalence of Slut!Sakura and/or Player!Syaoran. I'm really not. I'm sure you can think of one yourself.
Disclaimer: I don't own CCS or any characters therein. However, since CLAMP don't seem to be using Naoko to her full potential, may I borrow her?
Minor Character Warning: We're sorry, but the character featuring in this series is not Sakura, Tomoyo, Eriol, Syaoran, Touya, Yukito, Kero, or even Meiling. Deal with it.
Thank you.
-Essay 1: Placeholder-
She smiles a lot. Not because she's happy, but because she isn't sad. She doesn't need much to keep from being sad, certainly not as much as she needs to be happy. That's the way she is. So she smiles a lot.
Sometimes, the smile stays and she goes away, her mind telling a story to itself. Even when it's a sad story, the smile stays, because it isn't her face that's hearing the story. She does that a lot. Her body stays where it is while her mind goes somewhere else. Somewhere she can't go with all of her, because if she did, there would be no returning.
When she reads she always goes away, away to inside the book where she can scream, cry, or fight the way she never can in her real world. Her real world doesn't do anything much but smile. She desn't always want to smile. So instead, she reads, and when she has to come back she marks the page with a slip of crimson ribbon like the one in her hair.
Crimson isn't her favorite color in her real world. She likes aqua, as far from red as can be. If anyone ever asked why she always wore red in her hair, she'd tell them. But they don't, so she doesn't. But if she told someone, she would say that when she goes someplace else, red is always there in the sun on her face or the rubies set into the pommel of her sword. She never mentions that, when she reads, the crimson ribbon is always there to keep her in place.
She loves crimson in her reading world. But her reading world isn't like her real world at all. She's not the same. Her real world wants her to be a nice, quiet girl, and so she is. And she's happy, or at least not sad, but she can still dream of being otherwise. And her crimson ribbon is always there to mark her place.
~_~_~_~_~_~_~
"Naoko-chan, what are you writing?"
"Just a story. It's not finished."
"May I see it anyway?"
"Oh, it's nothing much, Sakura. Just a placeholder."