Nuclear Fission
IMPORTANT! Read this! DL, DR!
Pairings: NaruMai and a dash of Friendship!GeneMai.
Genres: Romance & Drama
Disclaimer: I will never own Ghost Hunt, 'kay? All rights reserved by all concerned parties.
[Spring 2]
Chapter Two
Anecdotes
I can't accomplish anything by myself,
but you gave me songs to sing.
From that day on, my heart's empty space
is always filled up by you.
—Electric Angel, sung by Hatsune Miku
"Ohime-sama." The slow steps upon the tatami mats were all that permeated the air alongside the tentative, fearful voice of the attendant, who approached the silent girl that stood like a bent bamboo by the sliding door to her father's room.
The large traditional Japanese house was that eerily quiet, the soft wind, laden with the heavy scent of cherry blossoms, even refusing to blow and spoil the tranquility inside.
"How many times have I told you not to call me by those honorifics, Reiko?" At nineteen years old, the haughty profile of Hara Masako had all but changed. Her dark almond eyes were still muted, her lip still quelled from speaking out of turn, the blue kimono contrasting sharply with her skin, which was rather pale from refraining to go outside. Rising from her bow, she gave Reiko a severe, condescending look that the attendant knew wasn't intended given Masako's usual gentle nature. "Get me some tea, and bring it to my room."
"But—" Reiko knew of the Hara patriarch's relationship with his only child and daughter, and that there wasn't anything particularly warm between them. Not when all that was expected of her was utter perfection. Masako may have caught the beauty and brains naturally, but there was still much, much more to work for to attain the approval of her father and a lot more other people. Which was rather natural when you think about it—after all, Masako's father had two more elder brothers, each of them leading successful lives and businesses. And since he was rather led by Chinese superstitions even with his nationality, when his first child was born and he discovered that it was a girl, he assumed that Masako's birth bode evil for the third branch of the prestigious Hara family.
Thus, Masako had to work hard to prove that she wasn't unlucky—that she wasn't everything that her father had assumed she would be.
To herself, Reiko thought that it was quite too large a task for Masako's small hands.
Reiko found her little mistress in a neat seiza position when she finally retraced her steps to Masako's room with the materials for the tea. The shoji that led to the outside yard was shunted to the side, letting the cherry tree by the partition send pale petals floating in. They dropped one by one on the tatami while Reiko prepared the tea, Masako quite oblivious of the latter's entrance.
"Masako-sama, your tea," Reiko said quite conscientiously as she rose and prepared to leave the room, her eyes carefully averted from her mistress's grave ones.
"Tell me," Masako said quietly, turning to look at Reiko, "have my achievements not been enough?"
"Ah, I—" Reiko swallowed nervously before answering, quite aware that one slip of the tongue would send Masako careening away to a direction that the head of the house would not appreciate. "I know you have done your best, Masako-sama. And by that, I mean that you also have your limitations as a young woman. Surely Hara-dono must've known that."
Masako smiled softly. "Chichiue is a proud man. Simply doing my best is not adequate to his eyes. More so when he thinks that I am a plague to this house. If hahaue hadn't died giving birth to me—"
"It was never your fault," Reiko said firmly, reading the river of guilt running in Masako's eyes, which were too grave for a girl her age.
"Come to think of it, this was Eugene Davis's problem too, one and a half years ago," Masako mused, examining the sleeve of her heavy silken kimono with a faraway look. "I must say, his attempt at escaping from everything was quite, if I may be allowed to say, brash. It left him and his family as huge emotional wrecks."
At the mention of the Davises, Reiko sighed lightly. "Oliver-sama didn't try to contact you after leaving for England?"
"Fufun~" Masako chuckled for a bit at Oliver's name, wrung out reluctantly from the attendant's lips. Reiko had never really understood her mistress's infatuation with the stoic young man, an infatuation that has persisted even with countless unspoken yet implied rejections. "Well, he has never really taken a liking to me."
"What made you like him so much, Masako-sama?" Reiko said in barely concealed confusion, her eyebrows in a scowl. "He does not even have the eyes to see your worth—"
Like Hara-dono, she was tempted to add, but pursed her lips. After all, such treason was dangerous.
"Reiko, maybe you wouldn't understand," Masako replied easily. "After all, I can never quite understand it myself."
Yes, Masako could still remember it quite easily in her mind, an event that could never wash away from her memory. Four years—which was quite a long time ago, but was like a breeze to the young Masako back then. Because that day four years ago had made her question for the first time her worth in the family, to her father, to everyone else, Masako had termed it That Day—the day when Oliver first made an impression in her mind.
It was funny, since Oliver hadn't really demonstrated something that could have made a normal girl fall for him. Masako had pondered about the mystery for a while, before deciding that maybe it was part of his charm, that solid, solid obstinacy, that haughty, unhidden pride in his sapphire eyes.
What Masako could first remember of that day was that she was crying under a willow tree in an obscure part of a nearby park, still in her middle school uniform, her bag flung carelessly aside. The rain was an unexpected but welcome guest, since under the cover of the rushing drops through the leaves, Masako couldn't hear her own thoughts coursing through her mind.
She had been fed up with the absurdity and injustice of it all—meeting her father's expectations had been a thing that took her away from herself. Those hollow eyes, puffed up from crying, might as well have belonged to a bird that has already decided to resort to death, the sheer impossibility of escaping the cage that was formed by her father's hands too much for the brittle wings. But as a woman bearing the name of Hara, Masako was sure that a suicide attempt on her part would cause her father more embarrassment than regret. In the end, it would accomplish nothing. Masako would cease to exist, physically and in others' memories. After all, to the eyes of an outsider, she had as much substance as a wisp of a shadow that was long since suppressed into the dark.
And as she cried there, with spirits so down that it might as well had been part of the earth in the first place, he passed by. Or no, the fifteen-year-old Masako had once led herself to believe, he did not just pass by—he purposefully came to raise her once again on her crumbling pedestal.
Even back then, he was as straight and as graceful as the willow tree that she had been crouching under for support, his raven hair falling into his ice blue eyes as he looked down on her pathetic form. And with a quirk of an eyebrow, he said, in a language that Masako knew but had never bothered practicing when in normal company, "And I thought I'd find some peace and quiet in here."
Masako looked up upon hearing that voice, her mouth half-open in protest, and when she stared in those wonderfully bottomless eyes of his, it was as if she broke from a trance—the spell of the rain came crashing down all around her, and the wound that the adults around her had left was painfully apparent in her look. The boy must have seen it, because a flash of conflict arose in his face before being completely washed away by his precise, scientific mind.
"Do you understand English?" he asked with a sort of deprecating glance, and Masako would have hated it if it wasn't from him. She didn't answer, and he took it upon himself that she hadn't understood, even as her mind comprehended his every word albeit with some difficulty at his flat accent.
He switched from English to Japanese, and even though his accent was still noticeable, it wasn't quite as hard to decipher his words. "Then, could you mind telling me what a middle schooler is doing here under my tree?"
His tree? His tree? Masako paused at this bold statement from the other teen, her dark eyes wide at the blatant possessiveness. She had never seen someone as bold or as domineering as the boy before her, and that made her bottom lip sag in a pout, all traces of the dark thoughts that she had been thinking gone for the moment. "I—I'm not crying. I totally am not. Even if I had been, it's none of your business." And this is a public place, she added inwardly.
"Are you sure? And I agree, it's none of my business," he said coolly, and crossed his arms. "But you're disturbing my place of observation, and it's annoying me. It's none of your business to cry either. You're just still a brat—and it's not as if you've already experienced something that'd warrant suicide, anyway."
Masako sniffled a little, and her gaze dropped down to the ground. "What if you're wrong about that?"
"I'm never wrong," he said quite decisively, and Masako knew that he believed it himself. And the strange thing was, she also felt that he was right… even with his high-and-mighty attitude.
"If you say so, then," she decided to say to placate him, since in his eyes there existed a faint shadow of annoyance. She didn't know what made her stay so agreeable even with his attitude, even when her normal self would have already either lashed out bitingly or gave this beautiful newcomer the cold shoulder. But she could feel it—the sheer strength of his presence. It contrasted sharply with her natural softness. He wasn't comforting, he wasn't any of those boys at school who wanted to curry her favor just because she was pretty and a Hara.
She instinctively wanted it. She instinctively wanted him.
My mobile, which had been placed haphazardly on top of the coffee table, lighted up and rang just as I emerged from a long shower, the hot water helping me relax even for a bit. Wrapping a towel firmly around my waist, I decided to let it ring three more times before picking it up, letting myself fall on one of the couches placed around the table. The caller ID told me that it was Gene.
It may be hard to acknowledge, but what I felt was relief. I wasn't prepared to exchange a volley of scathing words with Taniyama Mai tonight, although it would certainly help keep me entertained. Not that she would appreciate the sentiment.
"Hi, Noll. How's Shibuya?"
"I'd ignore the fact that you just asked me about the welfare of the city first before your own brother's, and tell you that Shibuya's fine. It's certainly not raining in here."
A laugh. "I just did something that you yourself would have done. And that's lucky. Today saw so many showers back here, on and off. The skies sure are indecisive today." Then a pause, a delicate one, and I knew what topic he was going to launch at next. "How about Mai? Is she okay?"
"As far as I see. She certainly put on some weight. Not as skinny as she was last time I saw her."
"She grew her hair out, right? I saw in the photos."
"Yeah. Quite a bit." I paused and toyed with the empty cup that I had left sitting on the table. The cold dregs stared back up at me as I looked in, like the remnants of a particularly happy memory. "A bit taller, as well. But she's still as impressionable as ever. I swear she blushes every time I look at her face."
Gene's resulting laugh was so infectious that I just had to smile slightly. "Naw, what would I give to see you two together!"
"I could only imagine." I sat back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling, stray strands of hair somewhat obstructing my vision before I straightened and flattened them out of the way with a comb. "Is Mum alright there?"
"Yeah. And I made another friend, which is quite funny because I wouldn't have met him if we hadn't decided to come to that same stretch of water at the same time. And I had another cat."
"Eugene Davis, you just don't know when to stop at cats, do you?"
"Ehehe~ I named him Noll cause he looks at me like you do."
"I can't believe I'm being compared by my own brother to a cat." A lace of exasperation entwined in my tone without my consent, and Gene laughed again.
"Nah, I love Noll the human more." I could practically hear his grin.
"Am I supposed to feel touched at this point?" I asked, deadpanning.
"Aw, I do love you Noll."
"Sure."
"Is that sarcasm I hear?"
The halls of the college were silent except for the gentle footfalls of the students and professors walking to and fro. Mori Madoka looked up from her papers to see a familiar tall figure on the far end of the corridor, her hands pausing from the action of flipping to the next page.
"Koujou?"
The man turned to face the direction of the call, and saw Madoka practically flying to his side, a smile widening on her face. "What are you doing here?"
"I just had a matter discussed with the dean." Koujou Lin looked at his watch and then back to Madoka's beaming face. "I'm arranging a transfer to this college."
"What, in the middle of the semester? That's highly irregular." Madoka looked rather confused. "And I was sure that you're a stickler for rules."
"Well, Mr. Davis requested me to, to keep an eye on his eldest son." Lin's lips twitched into the smallest of frowns. "I don't see how observing him would help, but I heard that he got into a bit of trouble in his final year in high school back in Japan."
"I see. Professor Davis, huh?" Madoka shrugged. "I knew of that incident as well." She sank her voice to a low whisper. "Apparently Eugene fell off the deep end or something and attempted suicide. The professor's wife had been uneasy about her son ever since."
Lin was silent for a few moments, pondering upon the piece of information. "I see. Maybe that's why the professor was reluctant to share any particulars."
Madoka sighed. "I didn't know that you owed the professor that much… even to the extent of transferring colleges."
Lin's visible eye looked upon Madoka, his severe gaze making her quail. "I didn't like this arrangement much, but I'll see what I can do of this situation."
johnbrown0105 logs in. 25 mins ago
gene_davis logs in. just now
…
gene_davis: Hi, John.
johnbrown0105: Ah, hello.
gene_davis: I haven't seen much of you lately. Are things fine by your end?
johnbrown0105: Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "fine", but in general, I'm okay. My life's pretty uneventful.
gene_davis: Eh~ Anyway I have a question. Have you ever fallen in love with someone?
johnbrown0105: E-Eh?! What's that all of a sudden?
gene_davis: Nothing much. I was just curious. Y'know, I've never really fallen in love truly before, and I'm already, what, nineteen?
johnbrown0105: Well, love isn't meant to be hurried into, anyway. I've known lots of people who don't meet their life partners until they were well ahead in years…
gene_davis: I see. Well, what about the answer to my first question?
johnbrown0105: Can we hold that later? I mean, it's quite a touchy subject…
gene_davis: Alright. I think I hit a nerve or two. XD
johnbrown0105: Okay. I'll, uh, go first, then?
gene_davis: OK, sure. ^^
johnbrown0105 logs out. just now
A/N:
Five words: I'm sorry, and thank you!
I'm sorry for the huge delay in this chapter. I scrapped out my first draft (which was already a few pages long) and wrote out a completely new one because it wasn't progressing how much I paid attention to it. Couple it with a few months of doing nothing but original short stories because I took up Literature for my college program, and because my last requirements for my courses are nothing but stories and papers and reports. I'm pretty much drained in terms of plot bunnies. Ehe~
And after a few months' deliberation, I finally decided to give our Hara Masako, who didn't get enough exposure last time, a background story. And since her seiyuu is the "Queen of Tsundere", why not notch her presence up a bit? xD
I changed my mind a bit, and then introduced Madoka and Lin into the story. I may find them in a pairing some chapters on.
And thank you for the reviews! It blew my mind. Certainly did not expect the enthusiastic response!
And let's all give Inada-sensei another huge "thank you!" for doing the sequel! Squee! I need more of Naru's chibi moments so bad. Hoho~
Character Files
[notes according to the Nuclear universe]
John Brown
Birthdate: Jan. 5 (Capricorn)
Blood Type: A
Height: 162 cm (5'4")
Age in Nuclear Fission: 23?
Notes: A third-year Philosophy student in Oxford. Simplistic and malleable, John moved from Australia to the British Isles to stall for time before entering the seminary, against his parents' wishes. Seemingly unfettered with worries, however, John might have a second, more deeper reason for being unable to commit himself to the cloth. What might it be, and how was he connected to Hara Masako in any way?
Hara Masako
AKA:Doll-san
Birthdate: Jul. 24 (Leo)
Blood Type: AB
Height: 152 cm (5')
Age in Nuclear Fission: 19
Notes: The only daughter of a wealthy landowner, Hara Masako seems like a typical rich ojou-sama from a typical rich family, but her difficulties with her father set her away from the stereotype, giving her a faltering eye and a firm yet gentle hand. Still in love with the narcissist even after countless rejections, though, she displays a decisive heart that Noll unwittingly might have taught to hold on tenaciously to her beliefs. More of her story might unfold as Nuclear Fission unravels slowly.
Give a poor writer an excuse to update. Review!