Decadence
A/N: () around speech indicates speaking in standard English, whilst ++ indicates Russian.
On the 12th of November 2016 at 2:12pm, Kyoko Mogami's heart was beating at approximately 190 bpm. The neck on her hair was standing on end, she was shaking slightly, and her life was beginning to flash before her eyes.
'Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god-'
What was going on? Was she dreaming? Why was he here? Had he seen her?
Given the fact that she had been stood stock still for about twenty seconds now and he hadn't moved an inch, she decided that the answer to that last question just might be in the negative. Good. Calm, now. If she could just make it to somewhere half-concealed…
Heart still racing and adrenaline up, she side-stepped into a side-passage and wound her way to the back of the square. Re-entering, she was now sure that Sho couldn't see her: his back was turned. Reaching one slender arm behind her, she turned a door handle and edged her way into the shop front, closing the door as slowly as she could.
"Kyoko? What's wrong?"
Behind the front desk of the vet's, Yashiro had noticed (with some alarm) her silent shuffle away from the door.
She whipped around, then shrank into a crouching behind a waiting room chair. Putting a finger to her lips, she frantically raised her eyebrows in a desperate attempt to communicate her plight.
"Shush," she whispered. "Just…. Shhhhhhhhh…."
There came a scraping noise as Ren poked his head through the surgery door as the back.
"Yukihito, what's… Miss Mogami?"
His brown eyes met her golden ones just in time for a long, muscular arm to push open the door and drag her away.
Suddenly Kyoko felt an enormous, crushing pressure on her arm. She was whisked away into a side alley, a heavy body pushing hers against a rough brick wall. Before she had time to register her situation, a strong hand was clamping hers back, and a face that she absolutely did not want to see was just inches from hers.
There was practically a look of mirth on his devilishly handsome face as he cupped her cheeks and began to caress her neck.
"I've finally found you," said Sho, leaning in uncomfortably close "It's been so dull without you…. Won't you come home?"
Kyoko looked up, trapped, and let a moment of panic turn into one of pure, unadulterated rage.
"What do you mean, home? You really think I want to go back with you? Whose fault do you think it is that I'm here? Huh?" A million sentient incarnations of anger rose above her in a dark cloud as she gained momentum "Now get off of me you CREEP!"
He slackened his grip and stood back a little, a look of mockery forming in his icy blue eyes.
"You talk like you ever had any other home. You forget that you owe everything to me. Without me, what would you have? You're just a jumped-up pantry girl who doesn't know your place. You should appreciate my generosity; thank me for what I did. Weren't you happy?"
Tension crackled electrically in the air. They had already reached the peak of the battle and Kyoko had decided that she was out for blood.
"No, Shotarou. No I was not happy. I RAN AWAY, okay? I ran away from your mum, from the hotel, and I ran away from YOU!" exasperation was now overriding the shivers of fear running down her spine. She was speaking with the speed of a racehorse "I told you I was unhappy and you ignored me. And now you want me back? Well listen here, fucker. You heard me on TV. I said I was starting life anew, and I jolly well will. I'm going to have the time of my bloody life out here, without you, so you can fuck right off into the sunset for all I care."
And with that, she kicked him in the shin and began running like a madman.
He, of course, gave chase.
"Don't you love me?" he called after her "Stop playing hard to get!"
They raced along the cobblestones, him closing the distance between them as they raced towards a dead end. Kyoko stopped at the high field boundary and whipped her head around to see him almost upon her.
"You know you can't run, just give up now!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Kyoko soundly placed both hands on the wooden barrier and neatly vaulted over. After weaving her way through a flock of sheep, jumping the other side of the pen, and systematically passing through every vineyard possible on the way back around to the Berger house, she realized that his footsteps were no longer behind her.
But walking down the familiar dirt roads in the oncoming twilight, Kyoko held back a sigh of relief. She could not allow herself that, just yet.
XXX
On the 18th of August 2016 at 10:23am, Kyoko Mogami woke up on the lap of a new friend.
"Mmmf" she groaned, groggily rubbing her eyes "Morning, Sally…"
"Morning dear!"
The two sat perfectly still in tired silence before Kyoko shot bolt upright, bright red and stuttering wildly.
"I'm sorry- I didn't mean to inconvenience you- I mean, I- Thank you for letting me use your lap. I can't believe someone as undeserving as me-"
"Babes, calm it! It's A-OK wi' me…" said Sally, getting up and then stumbling to the fridge "Ah, bleedin' 'eck, me leg's gone to sleep!"
The colour began to drain from Kyoko's face.
"I'mSOsorryIcan'texpressmyregretenoughIamsoverydeeplyindebtedtoyou-"
Suddenly the background chatter of the room stopped as every older lady turned their eyes to the door. Sally opened her smoky eyes wide and fixed them on Kyoko, putting a finger to her lips.
Silence reigned supreme in the room as their ears picked up on the noise coming up the corridor. A slow, methodical set of noises drew nearer. Tap, shuffle. Tap, shuffle.
Sally opened her smudgy red lips, still staring at the closed door.
"Alstair." She whispered.
She slowly closed the fridge door, then snapped her neck a perfect 90 degrees to the left and frenetically signaled to Olga.
"Kyoko! Get Kyoko outta here!"
Olga sashayed quickly over to Kyoko and, with a look somewhere between patience and that of a WBC heavyweight champion winning for the fourth time in a row, wrapped her arms firmly around her waist and hoisted her off the ground. She then calmly and quickly walked into the bathroom, still with Kyoko in tow, and shut the door firmly behind them. After delicately depositing the teen on a cleaner patch of tiling, she put a finger to her lips and sat down beside her.
Kyoko was just beginning to contemplate the sheer muscular power it would require to so easily lift her up when a loud clanging noise wrenched her from her thoughts.
"Open up! You're behind on last month, so you had better cough up this time." Came a deafening and surprisingly clipped, upper-class voice.
"Coooooming, coooming…" Mireya's slow drawl sounded from behind the wall.
The harsh clatter of twelve sliding locks coming undone was heard and then the voices became clearer.
"Have you got the money or not? I am a busy man, I'll have you know."
"We haaave it. Heeereee…"
The sound of flicking notes. A few irregular taps.
"You're missing some. You have to pay for the damages. You there, tell me, does that cupboard look even remotely fixed to you?"
A gentle swooshing noise. Kyoko assumed that he was pointing at the door of the pots and pans cupboard, which was hanging diagonally on one hinge.
"Buuuut… Mister Alstair… Youuuuuu are the one who broooke it…"
The crisp sound of a slap. The defensive scraping of shoes on the floor.
"Did I not make myself clear? You have to pay for the damages."
"But I…"
A more solid, dull impact.
"Pleeease! Next mooonth…"
"That-" thunk "is precisely-" whack "what you said-" crash "last month."
"Wait!" It was Keira's voice, quivering slightly "I'll pay this time. I got extra last night… just, just stop."
The shuffle of fabric.
"Really, where are your manners?"
"Please… please stop…"
The flick or crumpled notes. The brush of a shirt on a wool-mix coat.
"Good good, au revoir then…"
Tap, shuffle. Tap, shuffle. Growing more distant this time, reaching the door. It stopped. A pregnant silence hung in the stifling air.
"Oh and next time-" the creak of a door latch "I'll want extra for your new little boarder. Good day."
The closing of the door. The rhythmic, receding footsteps gradually disappearing.
When Kyoko emerged from the bathroom, Sally had not moved an inch. She was stood, rigid, staring at the door. Her eyes were open and staring wildly. A slight frown disrupted her brow. One hand was reaching into the cutlery drawer, and in its shaking grip was a blunted knife.
"That bastard, I'm gunna gut 'im someday"
XXX
On the 20th of March, 2008, at 6:45pm, Kyoko Mogami was staring in was really quite an achievement given her past experiences.
There had been that one Saudi prince who insisted on releasing his 32 trained hawks during the entrée, and that German football player who personally spraypainted the tables in the colours of his home team. This was not mentioning the Spanish royal who had had large ornamental baths of champagne placed around the hall, and the British musician who had installed a small swimming pool for his (illegal, she suspected) pet alligator.
But this… This was on a whole other level.
The most immediate thing about the Fuwa banquet hall was the smell. Overpowering, sweet, it was the smell of thousands upon thousands of flowers. They decked the walls, they climbed the windows. They engulfed ornamental pillars and invaded the darkest corners. They were everywhere.
Red peonies, all miraculously the same colour and shape, all smiling serenely from on high, all watching, waiting for the show to start.
("Your dad must really like flowers.")
("I think it's a family thing… I don't really get it.") replied the blond boy standing next to her.
("You don't like them?")
("I mean, what's so special?")
Kyoko whipped round, a million sparkles forming in her golden eyes as she began to speak at something approaching the speed of the average racecar.
("Don't you think they look just like a princess' skirt?")
She pointed at a specimen leaning out of his suit pocket. He blushed slightly.
("Look at the little frills! Like petticoats! The subtle shine of the petals, like shimmery silk! Isn't it exactly like what a fairy princess would wear?")
Kuon thought for a moment, then a childish grin set in on his face as he began to speak.
("Speaking of fairies… Do you know the story of Princess Rosa?")
Kyoko's eyes lit up. They could not possibly have been more aflame, or she would legally have been reclassified as a human-lighthouse hybrid.
("They say that sometimes, if you're reeeeeeeally lucky, a flower is inhabited by a little fairy called Princess Rosa. And-") he leaned in confidentially and whispered ("Sometimes she has a hidden treasure…")
His younger friend's eyes continued to glimmer for a few moments before her eyes began to tear up. This was not the reaction that he had been expecting.
("That's so lonely!") she sobbed ("She doesn't have any friends, and she's stuck in a flower all alone. Doesn't she have a prince? Every princess needs a prince!")
("They do? ") Kuon had been completely blindsided by this turn of events.
("Yes!") Came the adamant, if tearful, reply. ("Just like I have Sho!")
"KYOKO!"
Speak of the devil, here he was now.
Kyoko ran off gleefully down the hallway, giggling with joy at the prospect of playing with her handsome prince.
Kuon was left alone, his arm outstretched in some silent, unconscious attempt to call her back.
From behind him, Anatoly the enormous rhinoceros of a bodyguard stirred.
+"Here."+ he said, handing over a carton of orange juice. And then, +"You know son, from here on out, girls are only going to seem even more complicated."+
XXX
On the 20th of August 2016 at 5:45am, Kyoko Mogami was packing her suitcase. She trawled the flat for toiletries and loose socks that she'd left about, and then counted off on her fingers to make sure she had everything.
"You ready?" Sally peeked her head around the door just as she had finished zipping up the sides. "Let's go!"
The air was cool but light that morning as they walked to the station. The sun was just beginning to rise in the far horizon, bathing the skyline in pools of orange and red that set off Kyoko's fiery hair.
The empty streets they walked down echoed sadly in the growing light, as if they were singing a funeral dirge. For the first time, she became intensely aware of the loneliness of the inner city. The quietness, the cold, the silence. The faded shop windows were pitiful in their forced gaiety. Their vacancy only highlighted their lack of life, prolonged their mournful stares.
The thing that this heaving, struggling beast called Paris suffered from, she reflected, was a superfluity of holes: pot holes, bullet holes, injection holes… But most of all, a hole where the heart should be. Its inhabitants were hollowed out inside by their endless toil. All their money, all their efforts, all their hopes and their dreams, all drained from them by another hole. A hole at the bottom of the drainage basin, at the end of the funnel. They tumbled, fell and were pushed down its steep slopes, into the jaws of distrust and discontent. But the devourer of all was crime. Rearing its seven ugly heads and consuming all: crime. It snaked its way into every crack and corner, extending and expanding like an engorged dragon. Nobody could escape its lethal claws. But even crime could not escape the holes: the holes in its stomach, creating more mindless greed, always, always wanting more.
Kyoko was still noticing holes when she had arrived on the platform. The holes in her sweater, the holes in her socks, the hole where her future lay…
As her train pulled and the doors opened, she was hit with a moment of panic. This was it, this was the new chapter of her life. She was leaving everything she had ever known behind and wandering blindly forwards. She wasn't prepared at all. She was afraid of being alone again. She was afraid of having to adapt to somewhere new. She was afraid, simply put, of the unknown.
She turned around to her chaperone. On the bustling platform underneath the electric clock, she looked up, and with tears in her eyes, cried:
"Please! Please don't make me go! I'll work with you… I'll learn… you can teach me. Please! Let me stay!"
Sally, tall, calm, and composed, looked down on the whimpering teen.
"Babes, what're you on about? You're young, you 'ave your whole life ahead o' you! It might be scary, but there's a whole wuhrld out there waitin' to be conquered. You and I both know you've got too much talent to be stuck strippin' for married men for the rest o' your life." She sighed, then playfully ruffled Kyoko's hair. "Now, you're gonna get on that train, and yer gonna face yer fears, awright?"
Kyoko sniffed and rubbed her eyes a little.
"Fine…" she said, reaching into her bag. "promise me that you'll also conquer your fears. Promise me that we'll both do our best"
She handed over a thin package wrapped in tissue paper. Sally's penciled brows rose in confusion as she fumbled about with it.
"I- I can't accept this! Ain't this super precious?"
Kyoko stepped onto the train.
"Promise me."
The doors closed. The wheels began to turn.
Kyoko placed her hand on the glass as she glided past Sally. She couldn't hear the words, but she could see her mouth move.
'I promise'
XXX
On the 16th of September 2008, Kuon Hizuri was sat opposite a stranger. Well, two strangers.
A youthful man leaned haphazardly forwards, legs splayed and dark hair haphazardly hanging over his tall forehead. Beside him sat a lady with a bounty of golden locks falling to her waist and vermillion lips. Her back was poker straight, and she was looking at her companion with what can only be described as distaste.
"Rick! You're supposed to be prepping the child for leadership, not teaching him to slouch!"
"Relax, honey. I've already bought the chicken…"
XXX
On the 12th of November 2016 at 11:23pm, Kyoko Mogami was curled up in bed. She was not curled up on the mattress in fetal position, but instead sitting scrunched up against the headboard. The adrenaline of the chase had long since worn off, and now her peril was beginning to rush back to her.
'He knows.'
Suddenly she could see his smirking face again, pressing into hers. She could feel his grip tighten around her wrists, the rough feeling of the brick wall pressing into her back, and the dread of being trapped.
Trapped. That's what she was.
She stared out into the darkness. The faint glimmer of starlight shone through hundreds of little holes in
her lace curtains. Holes. They had followed her here.
But these holes were honest, beautiful. Transparent, they hid nothing. They let in light, rather than blocking it out. Perhaps her life was full of holes. Which ones led to light?
She fell asleep still upright, still facing her windows.
At the same time, Ren Tsuruga was brushing his teeth. He was slightly distracted, his eyes wandering around the edges of the mirror as he rhythmically moved the brush backwards and forwards.
He was thinking back to that afternoon. He was thinking back to the exact moment that he had rushed out of the office and caught a glance of the Mogami girl slammed against a wall. Her unexpectedly foul language was ensued by a remarkable display of self-defense, and before he could even think of intervening she had vanished into a field of sheep.
Her young pursuer, halted at the barrier, had turned around to him and snarled:
"What do you want? Back off!"
He almost let his mask slip. Almost. Instead his relflexes slapped a glowing smile on his face, and a tone of menace set in.
"I'm going to have to ask you on behalf of the townspeople to refrain from making our residents uncomfortable."
The teen stepped back, a malicious smirk plain to see.
"Residents? She lives in Paris. You know she doesn't belong here."
"Miss Mogami has lived here for four months now." Ren quickly shot back. His smile was blinding.
Sho paused for a minute, reflecting, and then resumed his verbal assault.
"What?" He laughed. Somehow, he was able to condescend from a considerably lower vantage-point than his rival "You got the hots for plain jane? I bet you'd just love to do what I've done to her. It's too late for you."
His next words were still reverberating around Ren's mind.
"You can't do anything about it, I'm Sho Fuwa!"
Ren spat out the toothpaste and looked up. An inescapable moment of realization was hitting him head-on. That's who Sho Fuwa was. That's why the name Kyoko Mogami sounded so familiar. He looked at the blooms adorning his arms and rinsed his mouth.
At this point, he decided, it must be fate.
Seven hours later, Kyoko Mogami was once again engaged in low-level chit-chat with her employers over buttered bread and coffee.
"Oooh, that's terrible that is!"
Mr. Berger raised his left hand in a questioning manner.
"Yes, Mrs. Berger. What's the matter?"
"Listen te this! Some poohr farmer's been shot! Not an hour's drive from 'ere, Courson-Les-Carrières."
Pierre motioned an old shot gun, then a small deer.
"It can't 'ave been an accident! It says 'ere 'e was missing three fingers. Something's not right, ye knoohw."
Kyoko absentmindedly put down her mug of coffee.
"Quite, I'm sure."
Three hours later, she was walking into town when it started to hail. Large frozen beads fell from the heaven and beat her body with admirable tenacity as she began to sprint. The metallic whine of a small engine approached from behind as Kanae sped past and then stopped a few metres ahead.
"Get on!"
"Kanaaaaaeeeeeeeeeee~~~"
The driver spent the next 5 minutes simultaneously battling off the affections of her passenger and navigating the sea of pot holes in the blinding downpour.
"Mou! Gerrof, I'm tryna park!"
Kyoko pouted and stayed put. She was more disappointed than she let on as they shuffled into the grocery store.
" 'Ey up Kyokes! Kana! Whatever 'appened to ye?"
"Well-" grunted Kanae as she pried her friend off her arm "If I could just get a word in edgeways, you'd find out that the most incredible thing happened yesterday."
"Hm?" Reino distractedly looked up from the counter. He seemed to be fiddling with something at his feet.
"Yukihito saw Sho Fuwa! In this town! Our town! Can you believe the coincidence?"
"What, that pretty boy? I-"
"What have you got behind the counter?" interrupted Kyoko. She shook ever so slightly as she spoke, her grip on the wet fabric of her jumper tightening.
In a moment that completely threw off any previous expectations and seemed almost providential in its confidence, Reino casually lifted a small Rottweiler up and placed in on the counter. It growled wetly at the girls through its floppy jowls before curling up and settling down.
So this was his new puppy. She had to admit, it was rather larger than she had expected. And those teeth, too, were probably sharper than they needed to be… Throughout this internal commentary, the black furry lump continued to stare at her with beady obsidian eyes as if searching her very soul.
"Cute, innee? Look," he began to ruffle the thin charcoal fur on the somnolent mass "here Holey, here boy!"
Kanae nearly dropped the packet of pasta she'd just picked off a shelf.
"You called him what?"
"Holey. 'Cuz of the 'ole in 'is ear. And it's sort of a pun, on 'holy'."
The two girls groaned in perfect sync.
"Reino Takagi… I swear to god… That doesn't even-"
On the 13th of November 2016 at 7:02pm Kyoko Mogami was closing the oven door on a fresh pan of baked ratatouille.
'Holes…' she thought 'Why hadn't I noticed that it was this simple?'
On the 17th of November, 2016, at 5:02am, Kyoko Mogami looked out of her windows to see that everything outside had frosted over. This, unfortunately, included another white envelope set on her window sill. Snatching it, cat-like, from the cold air, she hastily crumpled it and shoved it under a loose floor board. She then tiptoed through the darkness to the bathroom to get changed.
On the 21st of November, 2016, at 7:22am, local constabularies found the body of a potter dumped in a ditch at Varzy, half an hour's drive from Eugnes. He had been stabbed to death and was missing a total of seven digits.
A/N: Guess whose laptop was stolen from the public library! What a fun way to lose everything in the new year…
Thank you for all of your lovely comments! Let's work hard this year!
Things are beginning to tie together… Say your prayers, folks…