Magic Tricks
Author's Note: Submitted for the latest round in the Senkaimon LJ comm writing challenge. Please check out the community, it has nice fanfics waiting for you!
Author's Note #2: Shinji and Hiyori as a pairing is unbelievably daunting to write. No joke, seriously. Or probably it was because I'm not used to writing Shinji or Hiyori. With this piece, I completely changed my mind about writing romance on combative relationship like theirs.
Hope you guys could enjoy this one, and have a nice day.
There are things in the real world that Soul Society would never be able to tell you.
For Hiyori, that includes the list of revelations about her fellow vizards that she never knew could be possible.
Like the fact that Kensei is really, really, really afraid of cockroaches. (Yes, really. None of them would even know that if not for the fact that he almost yelled "BANKAI!!!!" when he saw one, right in front of Mashiro. And since the sole witness was Mashiro, naturally, everyone else and their neighbours with their children knew it.)
Or the fact that Lisa cries while reading novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (This, to Hiyori, was most probably the most stunning revelation of all, since she never knew Lisa could read anything not pertaining to erotic literature of any form.)
Perhaps even the fact that Mashiro sleeps and gropes her boobs. (Author's note: But since most readers already knew that, we might as well skip this, no?)
And maybe the way Love adores the Harry Potter series and wouldn't miss a book. (Another reading-related secret Hiyori found – perhaps Lisa's reading bugs infected everyone around.)
Maybe how Rose practically worships Ayumi Hamasaki. (No kidding, one would immediately link him to Italian operas or classical music but Hiyori caught him staring longingly at Ayumi's latest CD.)
Probably also how Hacchi tries to use human technology to change his hair colour. (Mashiro, naturally, objected heavily to that intention of his, but he refused to give up.)
And Shinji could be romantic when he wants to.
That might sound really weird to most people, even among the vizards (Author's note: You mean, the snark-talking Shinji with a Kansai accent and an attitude for everything? Weird is an understatement) and Hiyori wouldn't believe it herself if something didn't happen on one fine sunny day that changed her perception of Shinji forever.
It was about 50 to 60 years ago probably, when the Japanese fashion had taken a gradual assimilation with the western trends. When instead of representing a visitation to the funeral of a person, the act of giving flowers to a person had been slowly accepted as a gesture of romantic interest.
Hiyori never liked the humans, but she likes observing them. For someone who wouldn't die easily, it's interesting to watch the humans live their transient life. As much as she hate to admit it, upon closer inspection there isn't much difference between the shinigamis and the humans. They both live, die, eat, drink, perspire, defecate, emote, cry, and most of all – love.
Over the hundred years, Hiyori could tell that the fleeting years that the humans live were proved by how intense their lives were; most of them were direct effects of love and what comes from it. A dog famously waited near a train station to wait for its master who never returned. A mistress, infamously, walked down the streets holding the genitals of her lover she strangled in the midst of an erotic asphyxiation. A woman gunned down her unfaithful husband.
For them, truth is always stranger than fiction.
But there are stories that touched even Hiyori's humanity-loathing heart, but as humanly fashion as the humanity go, they never really made the big news. Like how a father in the neighbourhood passed away after he was hit with a nasty pneumonia for working in the rain for his child's college fees. Like how an elder sister fought with a few delinquents who attacked her brother and sustained permanent damage to the head. To nobody's surprise, instead of getting riled up or even voicing an opinion on these events, the humans prefer to think "thank goodness it didn't happen to me" and be done with it.
Shinji, like Hiyori, spent a great deal observing humans too. But unlike Hiyori, he could appreciate the humans and their idiosyncrasies. He used to share his thoughts about living as a human to Hiyori, who found them more irritating than enlightening – though that never really stopped him from continuing to blabber to her about what he saw that day.
"Hiyori, have you heard of cameras?"
"What is it? Candy? Can it be eaten?"
"It's Ca-me-ra."
"Doesn't sound like a Japanese thing to me."
'No idea, but it's kinda awesome."
"Yeah, tell me about it." Most of the time Shinji would only stop when Hiyori replied with a tell-tale sign that she's not going to be bothered about it. Maybe he'll tell her about cameras some time later.
Or maybe he could show her something that he learnt which would amuse her.
"Hey, Hiyori, do you know they have their version of tricks?"
"They?"
"The humans, dummy."
"What tricks?"
"They could make things disappear."
"One swift swing of my shikai does that."
"But then the disappeared thing will come back."
"I don't believe you."
"I'll show you."
It's lucky they were outside and walking on the roadside because then Shinji could pluck a flower for his experimental magic show.
It's even luckier that he stumbled upon a sunflower plant, and picked one that's the nearest to him.
"See, Hiyori, it's gonna be gone, look at it again."
Hiyori took a sideway glance towards the flower on Shinji's hand, and watch his grasp closed on the yellow flower.
He opened his hand to bare his palm and it's gone. The flower's not there.
'Oi, Shinji! You threw that away!"
Shinji looked somewhat positively startled by that outburst of disbelief.
"What?! I was trying to show you something! Don't yell at me before the show's over!"
"But it's obvious, you baldy, you threw it away, then you are going to pluck it again, baldy!"
"Why do you have to always call me that?"
"Because you're a baldy! Baldy! Baldy!"
Hiyori turned her back around and stormed back, but was stopped by a hand beside her right ear.
"Hey, look here, you dummy."
Shinji, clasped, then unclasped his hand and Hiyori saw something that wasn't there a nano-second ago.
The flower was back.
Hiyori couldn't even begin to ask what happened when Shinji handed her the flower.
"For you."
Hiyori felt like a little girl. Her cheeks were flushing scarlet.
"Th…Thank you."
Staring at Shinji's back as he walked flamboyantly towards a pretty girl who just appeared, Hiyori's thought circled around the gesture.
It was sweet, unpretentious, and not awkward, to her immense surprise.
Most of all, it's was a very human thing to do.
Maybe they aren't so bad after all.