A/N: AH MY GOSH, I AM SORRY. This update is inexcusably late ~ ( An entire month !D:)
Especially after your kind reviews. Really, thank you so much, they were incredibly encouraging~! Okay. I'm going to stop babbling now and let you read.
Oh, and I don't own VOCALOID, or whatever company made Soune Taya. But you knew that ~
***About two days later***
Pale, cold, early morning sunlight filtered through the large glass window, creating patches of light on the intricately designed carpet. The only sound in the bedroom was the resilient creak, creak of the worn orange suitcase as its owner bounced on it insistently.
Short blonde hair flopped up and down , the large bow set precariously on top moving in synchronization. The honey-colored bags fell on the cornflower blue eyes narrowed in concentration. With a final flounce, Kagamine Rin attempted to shut the lid of her stubborn, overflowing suitcase. To her satisfaction, it closed with a forlorn snap. Unfortunately, the hem of her soft , dark gray-blue wool skirt got caught between the lips of the suitcase, so when she tried to rise, she was pulled to the ground with a rather undignified fwump.
Laying on the expensive royal purple embroidered rug, the fourteen-year-old made no attempt to get up and brush the dust off her equally expensive silk shirt. She knew full well that she could have simply asked one of the maids to pack her suitcase for her, but then it would have been stuffed with the absurdly ruffled dresses and inconveniently beribboned gowns that dominated this place, instead of the simple knee-length skirts and button down blouses she preferred.
The real reason Rin had offered to pack her own traveling case, however, was because … she had wanted to say goodbye. Goodbye to this room, which, for the past six months, had been her home. Actually, the entire mansion had been her home, but this room was her special place. The place where she had read, and slept, and snickered as the maids emitted lovesick sighs as they spied on the milkman. The pale yellow walls, now bare, had only a short while ago been filled with her paintings. From where she was lying with her cheek pressed to the floor, she could see the apple cider stains she had made when she had first arrived and tripped over the hem of her cloak and splattered the sweet, lukewarm liquid all over the carpet.
She didn't want to leave. But it couldn't be helped. She had to leave today,in a matter of hours, to go and live with her-
"Lady Rin."
Rin jumped to her feet, hurriedly trying to smooth out her skirt and straighten her short locks, but it was no use. The sharp amber eyes studying her, the one on the right half-hidden by the light shining off its monocle, were already filling with disapproval . Long, medium blue waves of hair, bound near the tips in a loose ponytail, were impatiently brushed away by long-fingered hands in posh white gloves. He was quite tall, wearing wrinkle-free black trousers, a light gray dress shirt, and a tie the same color as his hair. The only thing remotely unusual about him was the decidedly old-fashioned waistcoat he was wearing, which sported absurdly long tails.
Soune Taya , Rin's butler and warden, let out a small hmph of disappointed as he surveyed the wrinkles in his charge's shirt, the mussing of her hair, and the imprint of the rug on her cheek. Rin gave a small, resigned sigh, dropping to sit on the bed for the long lecture that was sure to come. Probably something to do with being "ladylike" and "a delicate flower".
She wasn't disappointed. Taya immediately launched into a long speech about "the grace of a true aristocrat " , and then something about how it wouldn't do for her to "romp around like a common street ruffian". She tuned out about two minutes in, focusing instead on Taya himself.
Rin was glad that she wasn't going alone.
Sending her away from here, where, for once in her life, she had looked forward to waking up each day, was bad enough, but if she was to travel to where she was going without Taya, she would have probably refused to go outright. Taya, even with his blustering and speeches and scoldings, had been with her longer than anybody else in her entire life, and she didn't even want to imagine what it would be like to leave without him.
A sudden silence in Taya's long drone made Rin turn her attention back to the blue-haired man. He was staring at her with an expectant look in his amber eyes. She blinked, wondering what he was waiting for, then remembered.
"Uh...yes, of course, , Taya. It will never happen again and I will try my best to represent my family in an honorable way," she rambled off dutifully, knowing the words by heart.
His gaze softened . " I know, Lady Rin. But as the sole remainder of your long and distinguished line of ancestry, society will expect more of you than they would anyone else. Especially considering to whose residence we will be departing to in a few short hours, and how they will influence your future. "
Rin bit back a grin as he spoke. Taya had always had an amusingly old-fashioned manner of speech, and it was only because she had known him for so long that she was able to fully interpret what exactly he was saying. Her urge to smile vanished, however, when the weight of his words sank in.
He was absolutely right.
He was right about "society expecting more of her" , or whatever, but she had known that for years, and hearing it again came as no big shock.
The second part was what worried her.
"And so, Lady Rin, with that out of the way, may I request that I take possesion of your traveling case so I may transport it to the doorway for the porter to pick up ? " Taya said, oblivious to her trail of thought.
Rin shook her head lightly to clear it of the unhappy thoughts clouding it, then nodded. "Go ahead, I've packed everything up."
"Just that one ? " he asked, pointing to the solitary orange suitcase lying at the foot of her bed.
She nodded again, glancing at her huge, spacious, now-empty hazelwood wardrobe at the farthest corner of the room. "All my other stuff was packed and shipped a week ago."
Her butler strode across the room quickly and easily hefted the apricot-colored trunk on to his shoulder , then walked back to the entrance of the room. He paused at the doorway to fish out a silver pocketwatch out of the pocket of his suit.
"We will depart at exactly ten o' clock . Be sure to make yourself presentable, Lady Rin ." And with that, he swept out of the room.
With a deep sigh, Rin collapsed on her bed, lying spread-eagled on the soft floral-patterned satin bedcovers and staring up at the peaches-and-cream colored ceiling.
People said time goes faster when you are not looking forward to something ; in that case , the next one and a half hours were going to positively fly by.
A/N: Augh. This chapter was a pain to write, because the wording wouldn't come smoothly, and the pace was horrible, too. /orz
As you can see from the beginning of the chapter, this part of the story takes place a bit after Chapter 1. The next chapter will take place directly after this one, because it was originally supposed to be one chapter, but I had to split it into two because I'm a slow typer and I wanted to update ~
IMPORTANT[kind of]: On a whim, I decided to try and fit all of the characters on the Vocaloid Archive character list into this story. I've found places for almost all of them, but the genderbends are giving me a bit of trouble. Not to worry, they will get in ~! Somehow, somehow ~
Again, I apologize for this terribly late update, and hope you enjoyed reading this ~ Questions, critiques, and suggestions are welcomed ~
~Nyen-tan