Sorry this is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay late. Other things got in the way. I seem to get busy with other stuff nowadays, I really need to make time for my writing .
ANYWAY, I haven't really written anything much that's new, but I felt I owed you all a chapter, so please read and enjoy, after taking so long to update~
All rights reserved, I do not own Durarara! or the characters, they belong to the wonderful Ryohgo Narita and Suzuhito Yasuda. Original characters belong to me.
21.
The next day seemed to pass by longer than any other day. Shizuo had to be out all hours and Mueki was stuck inside. She thought she would clean around a bit since there was a lot of dust and some grime in various places of the apartment. At least it was something to do.
It was then as she attempted chores she never really had to do herself that the model had found out something about herself as she nearly finished gathering dust in the main room of the apartment.
One: that cleaning was definitely something she wouldn't want to do as a profession and two: despite the face that it wasn't something she'd see herself doing anytime in the near future, she was actually pretty good at it. The place was as clean as it could be without her changing anything too much. It was his place, not hers and she made damn sure that kept that thought in mind.
Sure, some manual labor helped to waste a huge portion of her time, but it didn't seem to drag on as long as she hoped as she sighed and looked down at her go bag. There were still a few outfits in there and something else that seemed to never leave the bag. The corner of the item glared back at her from the bottom of the bag as she tried to think about anything else to do.
There was the television she could watch.
Nope.
There weren't any books laying around, but she never expected Shizuo to be one type to just sit and read in his free time anyway. A couple magazines, but she doubted that he read those too. Just from the covers, she knew it wasn't the articles that caught his interest.
He had no games of any sort – again – not like she saw him as a gamer. When he was younger, maybe, but now? Nope.
She didn't know anyone else who lived here, whether in the building or in the area, and wasn't too sure about just walking out and starting conversation with just anyone. She wasn't questioning the amount of nice people who would share random conversation with her, but she knew that there were just as many – maybe twice as much – people who were either rude or insane and she wasn't going to really risk that.
She already worked with too many lunatics to befriend one out of boredom.
Besides, she was already content just laying down on the couch. Maybe she could play some music? But did she have her music player with her?
She looked in the pockets of her go bag and found the device, but couldn't find a pair of headphones.
Damn it all...
After contemplating about it, she slowly reached into the bag and took out a scrapbook that was covered in some kind of red velvet fabric and looked at with with neither nostalgia nor lost happiness. As she thought back and remembered exactly the last time she saw this, she thought of how she managed to scrape together the first few years of her career in this album and decided to take a quick look out of boredom.
Also out of boredom, she tried to lie to herself. Tried to make herself think that she cared about this picture book and that she just to see how she had progressed. She eventually gave that up as she realized how bad at lying she really was and just moved to just drop it on the floor in front of the couch.
As she stared at it, it turned out to be extremely odd to her how this book was always with her up until the point when she decided not to finish it, yet she never really looked at it herself until now.
Might as well.
She made herself some tea and sat herself down on the floor with a sigh.
As she decided she would do, she opened the cover and looked through past photo sessions she had kept tracked of as well as photos of her on the runway in the early years of her career. She didn't really pay attention to the pictures as much as she thought she would. With some she would see mistakes that she knew that she had already fixed. With others she saw poses that she never did as often and thought maybe she should relearn what other angles would work for her. She would get lost in random thought and eventually glance back at the page to see the next photo and repeat.
In the moment, all was well. Dull, but well. It wasn't until she looked at the photos that were just bluntly tossed near the end of the scrapbook that she suddenly became more disgusted with herself as they spilled out onto her lap.
She remembered where and how these photos came to her possession.
In the early years of her career, it turned out that as she began traveling around from show to show, as an attempt to introduce herself as a model, there were some unwanted photographers in the backstage area. A portion of the photos had contained visual documentations of her changing in and out of the clothes during the shows she participated in. There were even a few photos of some guys she paid no attention to that were attempting to get a grab at her – and not in the "Can I have a word with you?" way either. They all had obviously failed considering how many people were packed in such a huge area.
Most likely, what happened with these photos was that after they were developed, the agency had bought them and gave some of them to her and the rest to her agent to get rid of since no one would suspect that the subject of the images to own such crude photos of herself. She never got to it, it seems.
She tossed the photos back into the scrapbook, not wanting to look any further into any of it, and closed the book sliding it as far as she could from herself. Hugging her legs, she began to rethink about how she really thought of herself. How she saw herself from the beginning to how she currently thinks now.
Just like when she started, most new models nowadays were as young as twelve. That was mainly in high fashion, but still all the same to her. She was able to switch back and forth from high, alternative, and contemporary fashion depending on which designer wanted to use her look. She didn't get much offers to go out on the runway these days since she started to really fill out. Mostly all these designers wanted to use as their dolls were basically like tall ten-year-olds. Thin, flat, and most without a mind of their own since they go on to do stupid things to keep their look.
Another downfall for her. Mueki, herself, was healthy, well-developed, thought ahead, and constantly thought of many things at a time whenever she had a chance. Which was more than most. Sure there were other girls who could think and were book smart, but there were a lot more who were just so naïve that they were never able notice when the industry would turn them from nice and innocent to crude and corrupt.
Not wanting to, she scooted herself up and opened the scrapbook again to see a photo of herself and another model. In this photo she was at least fifteen – maybe sixteen, she couldn't really remember – and the model next to her was her height at thirteen years of age. Both of them so slim, they were almost skin and bone. Both of them very tired looking. Both of them bombarded with camera flashes, make-up, and hairspray.
If it weren't for the eyes and very pale skin tone, Mueki probably wouldn't have recognized herself. It didn't surprise or scare her, but it did make her think about herself in a new way. Still...her pessimistic thoughts lingered as she continued looking at the photo seeing something else.
The difference. The difference between them in this photo was that one of them is smiling at that so-called glamor and you could already guess that it wasn't Mueki who was smiling.
She sighed and looked at her own limbs. She was still pretty thin, but a bit more plump than she was. She wasn't overweight or underweight and maintained an average look. Healthy. She never really saw herself as hideous or ugly. She would just see herself as fairly pretty, but nothing more.
Much better than how she thought of herself years ago.
She continued looking at the photo in front of her. A younger self staring straight back to her. Not staring. Glaring. Like she knew she would be looking at this now.
A glare that told her how annoyed she was. How she hated it. How, even still in the early years, she knew that this would probably bring her down somehow and she'll his rock bottom. She felt a déjà-vu feeling and ignored it, thinking of it as nothing.
A sighed escaped her lips as she pushed her hair back and leaving a hand to her head, elbow on her thigh to prop herself upright, feeling how physically drained she could've been when she took that photo to have such a specific look in her eyes. It was like she wanted to take a long sleep. Sleep a deep sleep and never wake up.
Wonder what that would be like...
She shook that out of her head and looked past the open book to collect her suddenly tired thoughts.
As bad as things were, could she really say she's happy where she stands now?
Well, technically, she was sitting, but the technicalities was beside her point.
She scoffed at herself, shaking her head lightly. Why she was being sarcastic with herself was also beyond her as she went back to her previous question.
Was she happy? Was she glad she wasn't in that huge circuit anymore or is she still just another raggedy doll waiting for the day when her thread would wear out and she would completely fall apart at the seams?
They hardly ever use models, in any agency, over thirty. If they did, it was a rare exception. She had a few years left, but with that mutation of hers, she would be in business longer than she should and she could always lie about her age. Well...someone could do that for her. And Kin would most likely be the one to help her along with her continuous career for as long as she could. Especially since it was the only thing she knew to do and Kin knew that, so of course her agent would want to help, just like she always did.
But...
What would happen if the day came for Kin to retire? Would she take the chance? Surely the agent deserved it, but a sense of something missing came to the pale girl as she thought of that. Kin was already around and helped her when others couldn't. She didn't freak out too much when she first saw Mueki's...skill.
Another realization came as the model realized how much she had taken her agent for granted. Maybe she was more spoiled these days than disconnected from everything like she thought. Either way, people like Kin were not a dime-a-dozen. Who's to say that the next agent would be so understanding about everything?
The answer would be that they wouldn't.
There is the exception of the few who can be able to tolerate her, every part of her, but there are too many who would freak out and run at the sight or the annoyance of the model.
She closed her eyes and reflected once more with her head down to her chest and arms hugging her knees.
Was she happy?
No real thoughts came to her so she took in a deep breath, held it in for a few moments, and let it all out. Let's try again.
Was she happy where she stood in her life right now?
Now she started listing things one by one and for once in her life, she took someone else's advice seriously and actually started with the positives of her life now and they were, surprisingly, easy to list off. Maybe because she didn't have as much good in her life as an average person's, but she put that aside for the moment as an attempt to keep her mind as optimistic as she could be at the moment.
Being optimistic was easy, it was pushing down her pessimistic side that was a bit of a challenge since she was so used to it by now.
Optimistic thought one: she didn't have to travel far for work as much anymore and the only thing that was blowing up right now was advertisement which was always pretty simple. And mainly local. High fashion would have to wait a few more months – give or take a week or two – but early shows, fittings, and practices were to start the following week so she had until then to get her stress relief remedies which mainly consisted of her lovely little music player.
And a new pair of headphones.
Another positive point, she got to move here. There was everything here for her to work in whatever it is they hired her to do. And if she didn't get to move here she wouldn't have...
Her eyes opened as she looked past everything when it came to her next thought that finished her previous one.
She wouldn't have met him...
Shizuo.
Him.
Shizuo Heiwajima.
She smiled thinking of his name which eventually led to the thought of him. How she became to turn this way at just the simple thought of him was far beyond her. If she hadn't met him, she wouldn't have met his friends who managed to become friends to her as well. An odd group who smiled at her and welcomed her while barley even knowing her themselves.
She wasn't completely able to do that, but it seemed they were willing to wait for the day she could accept them like they do her.
As she returned to the reality outside of her head, it also seemed that she was only sitting there on the floor for a only few minutes, but her thoughts had been taking up much more time than she thought when she heard the turn of the lock and the door opening.
She turned back from her place on the floor to see the man of her thoughts walking in though the threshold with a smile just for her.
"Hey, there," he waved, quickly heading to the couch, not letting her move from her place. He leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead and pulled back enough to see the open album in front of them and raised a brow at her. "What's that?"
She looked to the scrapbook and pushed it away from her again after closing it.
"Nothing really."
"Hm. Didn't look like nothing."
The pale girl turned her purple eyes to the blonde. A hesitation in her mind, but a straight face to him. Didn't take long until she finally asked him.
"Do you really want to know?"
"No, I was asking out of kindness."
She smiled at his remark and obliged.
"Okay then, if you must. During the first few years of my 'professional career,' I thought it would be smart to save some photos for as long as I could to see the progression of my so-called work. One day, I thought of it as a complete and utter waste of time and never continued with it thinking it was just a useless project. Ever since then, it's been close by hiding in plain sight. I don't know why I keep it since I never really look at it, but I can't really bring myself to just toss it out for some reason."
He lightly lifted a hand towards the red photo album. "Can I?"
Without hesitation, she let him hold the album and let him look though it, forgetting about the loose photos that were tossed in the back of the book. He flipped through page after page and stopped near the middle with a questionable look to her.
"How old were you in these?"
Took a moment to think about it while she pursed her lips at the numbers running through her head. "I think I was maybe fourteen – fifteen the earliest in those photos."
His eyes widened a bit as he looked to the purple eyed girl in the photos and back to the one in front of her.
"Don't look it."
"How do I look in those photos?"
He looked back at the pictures he stopped at and tilted his head with his brows furrows.
"In some you look like you're in your late-teens, or something. Like a eighteen year old wanting to look older" He straightened his head looking at another photo. "And in the other ones, you look you're in your early-twenties. Maybe a bit younger."
She scoffed playfully. "How old do I look now?"
He looked to her and feigned a thinking expression, playing everything out as he crossed his legs putting the scrapbook to his side, his foot shaking a bit.
"I'd have to say...fifty-five."
She laughed quickly reaching for one of the couch pillows and smacked him in the head with it. He laughed with him falling on his side, picking her up from the floor and taking her along with him in the descent.
She squirmed in his hold as his hands brushed lightly at her ribcage. When he stopped, she laid there in his arms. Her breathing coming heavily from her as a result of holding in her laughter and her many movements from doing so. She felt it as he pressed his lips to her head and felt his breathing through the strands of her hair. She also felt how peaceful and how playful everything became all of a sudden.
It came to her realization that that's exactly who Shizuo was. Peaceful and playful – though he probably might not seem like it to others. Sure he can lose his temper, she learned, but he's just generally a calm person.
Her eyes wandered to look down at the scrapbook that fell open on the floor and stared at it, taking a long, hard look at her younger self once again. Her sixteen year-old, tired, overworked self on the runway just staring right back at her with that same glare she saw in the previous photo she saw. She then looked up at Shizuo looking to her with a light curiosity, but a playful smirk on those lips of his.
With a smirk of her own, she raised herself up some so she could kiss him and leaned her forehead against his as he changed their position on the couch so she could lay on top of him. Her arms now around his neck and acting as a makeshift pillow for his head.
Was she happy with everything at this point?
It's an answer that you could probably already guess, but it's an honest answer that she couldn't deny it, even if she wanted to. And she wouldn't.
Yes.
So, that was just a chapter to kind of get you into Mueki's mind a little more, even though the story is kind of revolving around her, you don't get as much insight as you did just now, huh? Well, it's just a filler chapter till I can get everything together, and I AM working on it! So, hope you enjoyed and I'll catch you all later~
Hopefully my next update won't take so long .