A/n:
this chapter is the longest chapter I've ever written in NfaN history. 33 pgs worth.
I had a really bad day. A lot of you might not like this chapter because of it. No, the quality of the chapter is not bad because of lack of writing skills, it's just the content that you may not be pleased with.
Trust me, it's bugging me, too.
I wanted to make you have to wait for the next couple of chapters to "watch" Nya give birth. (No I won't colorfully describe every ounce to you. I won't even describe the process. Just what's happening in the infirmary while she's in labor till the time comes.) So...here's this one.
NO. HATING.
This chapter made me sick to write.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR:
The First Rule of Truly Living
~Yin
Vanilla Princess was pretty much in killer pain, for as much as I would know about pregnancy. Some person whom I was not the slightest bit familiar with waltzed in, whisked her off her feet, and flew her on a flying pony all the way to the infirmary, where they magically fed her a rhino tranquilizer and spoon-fed her pancakes. The end.
No. That's a lie. Since I can no longer insult the bozos hanging around me anymore, that's the only humor I can come up with. You'll have to bear with me here. This is the worst punishment I've ever had. My freedom has been stolen from me by my brother, which is the worst part of this, 'cause Sparkles promised me the day he told me he was a vampire that he would never, ever, EVER Compel me to do something, unless it was running from danger or hiding from it. It's the worst feeling in the world to have that promise broken—it's like a form of disrespect, in a way, because something about me was appalling enough to have to force me into doing what he wanted. I've always hated Compulsion. I've never been its fan. But it hurt to know that my brother was willing enough to do that to me—to force me with an unfair power—at his own convenience.
You probably don't care, though. Back to Vanilla Princess, because I'm sure she's your main focus at this point…
Vanilla Princess really was hauled away by a robot. They came in to the kitchen when Kai, Sparkles, and Squishy followed at her heels, my brother's arm wrapped around one side and Kai's at the other. Like that robot had been waiting or something. It was a dude, with low cropped brown hair that was totally gelled to be all spiny, with brown eyeballs. His voice was all white-lined and flat the whole time he was talkin', being all brooding and … roboty. He went, "Please, follow me to the infirmary; we have a bed awaiting your stature, Ms. Nya." He kind of just guided them towards the door that was across from the front doorsy things, but when Twinkies, Zane, and I tried to follow them, Kai whirled on us and told us to stay behind. I guess going into labor is like some kind of event that you have to be cordially invited to or something. Zane didn't even argue, and Twinkies looked relieved, and I really didn't care if I went in or not. I just know that she was complaining all the way down the hallway until I couldn't hear her anymore. Maybe it's because we're all too young or something. I mean, I know I wouldn't want Zane standing there with his big eyeballs and freakishly cheery smile, staring at me with that smile on his face the whole time I'm sitting there giving birth. Like: Hello, I am staring at you with a happy smile on my face because I am always happy and adore you, even if you look constipated at this point in time. And plus, Twinks probably isn't digestively inclined to stomach watching a baby being born. It might deprive him of his innocence. I just really am not even bothered by it—maybe if I knew Vanilla Princess better, it would be more important to me. But as it turned out, she tried to crack my head on the rocks outside just a few hours ago, so I'm not that into meeting her at the moment.
That's all I know. Sorry I don't have some kind of omniscient power that lets me tell you every little detail of what's happening in the gizmo. You can sue me later, but I regret nothing. Deal with it.
So here we are. The Cupcake of all Cupcakes has returned, and she's led us out of the kitchen we were condemned to stand in until the labor was over. She walked us out the same door that Sparkles and his gang walked through, but instead of turning to the left like they did, she turned us to the right, leading us down an empty hallway with paint the color of mud and a throwing-up ache in my stomach. I kept my hand spread over the bloated skin underneath the soft t-shirt and followed closely behind Twinkies, Zane, and Cupcake, my tongue bitten against my will. If I could've, I would've just been spitting invectives, colorful commentary, right and left, enough words to fill this hallway and make Shakespeare roll over in his grave. I'd be running on a tirade with the voicing of my thoughts, smashing windows with how loud I was yelling—lemme tell you, no one here would be so unspoiled after I was done with them. They'd all be rotten eggs, having heard every curse word that had EVER been invented in ANY country. Oh, man, they would be RUINED.
But then again, in the end—what good would you be doing yourself? If you could insult, where would you end up?
I heard that voice again. That one that pops into my head, that sounds like somebody is standing behind me and whispering faintly in my ear. The man nor woman, the girl nor boy, the sucker in between that has a voice that could belong to either. Stopping, I looked over my shoulder. That's how real the voice sounded. But there was no one to be had, to jokester to be caught in the act, no one I could uppercut with my fist. It felt like, in the hallway, with Cupcake's voice softly combing through the minimal octaves of a tour guide's voice, there was someone else there. Someone else who knew they were creeping up on me, that same feeling you got when you felt like someone was staring at you, that weird itch-burn on your face. It sounded to me like someone was standing right in front of me, unseen, only allowing me to stare at the empty hallway behind them as their green screen, their backdrop. I felt uncomfortable. Like the music box was playing again…
In my mind, I felt the shivers of someone unseen touching me, prodding their finger against my arm, even though I didn't feel anything against my skin. I jumped back in surprise. Don't ask me how I knew, and I swear to you it's NOT just me being paranoid, but something was definitely lingering in the hallway with me, stuck between two worlds as it stared right back at me while I stared right through it. I knew whatever it was literally was there. Upright, watching me, maybe laughing, or maybe it was trying to get my attention, I just couldn't hear it. Whatever I knew was there, it wasn't the same as the voice in my ear. I knew that much. There was something…
"Seiko?"
I jumped out of my socks. I whirled around, finding at my other side Twinkies, crookedly concerned. Cupcakes and Zaney-poo (I really need to find a nickname for him) had stopped at the end of the hall, looking at me with upturned noses, some sort of snobbish way of eyeballing me at a distance. Seriously, if you're going to look at me like that, just say what's on your mind. Although, if they did, I wouldn't be able to spit a witty comeback that would therefore ease the tension calibrating the inner sanctum of our acquaintanceships. Trust me, I've already tried. I stuck out my chin instead, finding that defiant movements were still on my to-do list. If that had been part of the Compulsion bargain, I think Cole and I would've had a bit of a tiff, to put it mildly. I could've dumped all the hot sauce I have in my inventory on that one, but as you can presume, I'm unintentionally at a loss for words. "What?" was all I could come up with, but I couldn't shake the feeling that there was still something behind me. I turned my chin a little. Still saw nothing.
"Everything okay?" asked Twinkies, taking a slow step towards me. What, did he think I was standing on top of a giant grenade and the minute he made some kind of teensy tobble, I'd come toppling over and blow up the place? Did he need a painful reminder that my words no longer could carry their usual sharp consistency?
I wonder if I can still hit people, I thought. Perhaps I could resort to brutal self-expression if he did any worse. "Whatzittooya, Twinkies?" I threw a quick scan behind my shoulder. Seriously.
He rolled his eyes. "Are we still doing this?" he asked, and crossed his arms. Okay, so maybe he wasn't doing ballet on broken glass anymore. But I wasn't going to let on that I was slightly baffled. I lifted my chin higher into the air, with that stomping past his harmless Twinkies concern with my own bare feet slamming to the pavement. There was no way I was going to let on I was not cool with being freaked out by the random floating air happenin' around and in my personal space.
"Let's get your little tour over with, shall we, Cupcakes?" I pulled my shoulders closer to my ears, densing out the evils trying to slide into them. This little municipal community thing they had going on here was about to be blown out by my own blow-off of Twinkies. Yeah, I did get a funky look from Cupcakes, because I had just called her 'Cupcakes' and apparently she wasn't one of those bright girls who were able to gather context clues and glue them together with a cheap adhesive. Her doe eyes made me want to run over her with a car. No, a truck. No, a semi. No, a tank. With guns. And spikes on the wheels. It was hard to decide, so I ignored her face completely. What better way to hate her than to shut her out absolutely? She was already bothering me with her blinking. "Well? Let's move it!" I snapped my fingers. At least I could still be snarky.
Cupcakes, after needing a second to herself to somehow gather up my words like they're being disgorged in Latin, started moving again. She wasn't talking. Thankfully. Silence: the sweetest music to my ears! Zane blew me a look, not of, you know, like, refuting-ness like I normally got, but more of just looking, witnessing creepily like he normally does. His eyeballs held a touch like he was the one hero when a crowd watched a kid get goaded by a bully and their unshakeable violence. His little hobble down the hallway after her made me follow, because I actually needed to say a couple non-evil words to him. That was a great plan until I felt Twinkies gently grab my hand and tug me back. Okay, apparently he needed to say something to me, too. Once the two realized that we weren't coming, they rotated to gaze back at us. "We'll catch up in a minute, okay?" Twinkies explained before I could do anything. To my horror, Zane nodded like he understood and followed Cupcakes. Nuuuuu, I thought, restraining from reaching out yearningly for their shrinking backs. Don't leave me here with him! DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE WITH A TWINKIE! I watched Cupcakes and Zane grow tinier down the hallway. So much for words.
I could feel Twinkies's fingers on my wrist. I should know; my pulse soared, lively, underneath the unique pattern of his fingerprints, staining my skin with their invisible vigor. I slowly could turn to him with my eyes low, only being able to reach up his chin, until I gained the courage and willpower to look higher. His eyes, flaming with something deep within them, met mine directly. This was not good. Every part of my body was finding some reason to react, especially my lungs, squeezing out the majority of my air before I could find it fast enough in replacement for the stuff that was somehow leaving me now. I didn't want to stand back here with him. I didn't want to be alone near Twinkies. I couldn't. This was against every rule I had set for myself, disbanding every single regulation I decreed be valid until I spoke otherwise. When I'd met Twinkies, when both of us were locked up in that weird cell back in Noel's pretty little dungeon, I had bound myself with plenty of constrictions and reasons and doubts just to keep me away from him. This went back on everything I had vowed to follow. It was like disgracing the life guidelines one abides by in participation to a specific religion.
I finally mustered the voice that was hidden in my throat. You know I'm not usually the quiet type when I have loads to say, but when it came to these situations, I was as good as a dead girl. No words to be had. "What?" I pressed my lips together in a thin line. Twinkies held fast to my wrist. I hated the burn underneath his touch.
"I wanted to talk to you," he said.
"I kinda got that, Captain Obvi." I rolled my eyes. Quite the show, isn't he? "We're marooned in the middle of the hallway with absolutely no idea where the others went. I'm sure there's a pretty darn good reason for you making me part with the other two, otherwise we wouldn't be standing here."
Twinkies raised an eyebrow. I duly noted that he was still holding my wrist, something I really wasn't digging to well, so I slowly started to untangle myself from the gentle band of his grasp. Twinkies appeared not to have remembered that he had this grip on my hand, despite the fact that my pulse was playing the drums of a rock song against my own skin, a feat I'm sure he'd felt clearly and plainly. He let me go promptly. "I figured now would be a good time to talk, since Nya and Kai and the others will be out for a while, and all we're doing is walking around. I saw the opportunity." Cheesy opportunity for a conversation, I thought. What, exactly, is this about?
I crossed my arms over my chest. Just ensuring he won't try and hold my hand again. Or, wrist. Whatever. "Shoot."
He reached, rubbing the back of his neck, eyes darting away to some point past me. The ghost long forgotten, I liked the growing flush on his cheeks better than I liked cookies, 'cause it was betraying his inner thoughts or something cheesy like that. He looked like a tard when he blushed. Boys I've met don't normally do that, but all of twice I've seen today two guys that really do: Squishy, and Twinkies. It's rather entertaining. "Well, I, um, I wanted to say…you were great out there today," he breathed. My eyebrows shot up. I wasn't expecting that one to come shooting up the geyser any time soon—it wasn't exactly the main event. My arms tightened around my chest. "I mean…what you did back there, to the shadows, it was awesome. And you saved us."
Something had taken itself up in Twinkies' blue eyes, something bright and soft all at once. Like something blurry around the edges but harder towards the center, where everything was bottled up but was slowly starting to bleed out of a wound that would never heal. Rapidly, my eyelids flickered, finding the sight of him still there. Twinkies shoved his hands in his sweatshirt pockets. My hesitation was noticed. "Yeah, well," I said roughly, trying to make up for the lost half-seconds. "It had to happen. And plus, I owed y'all one."
Twinkies made a face. "What do you mean?" He asked.
I shrugged. "Well, you save my crummy butt all the time. You and your little muchachos. So I figured I'd pay the piper." My tongue ran along the front of my teeth underneath the cover of my lip.
Twinkies chuckled. He batted his hand contemptuously. "Nah," he said, "we don't do it for the art of being repaid or anything." His hand came to his heart theatrically. "The repentance would just kill us." He grinned like the king's fool. My eyeballs rolled.
"You're incredible," I shook my head. "Look, dude, I did it to do it. Comprende? Giron no owari." 'End of discussion.' I jerked my chin towards the way that Zane had gone, eager to degenerate my existence. "Let's go. They're probably rooms ahead of us by now."
I started to move, but his hand grabbed mine again, pulling me back into the discussion I wasn't fit to having. I really didn't want to be here with him. I was more than willing to disappear completely, to sink into the walls and vanish or something, than to stand here and have some sort of heart-to-heart with him out of every person in the world. I dared to flee the scene, but get lost in a cavern of many detours—was there really no way out? I finally, under his urgent grasp on my arm, turned back to him, my eyes squeezed shut. I hoped that was enough of a sign for him to realize his unfairness and let me run away. Twinkies's face was as serious as anything, though. Damn. "I wasn't done," he told me, pulling me back to him. I pressed my lips together again.
"Then go on and get this over with."
Twinkies sighed. Once again, his face turned the color of a cherry bomb, making me want to snort and suppress laughter. But I refrained. Since I was forced to have respect for those around me and lack in any insulting activities, I was stuck having to sit here and swallow my bowels of laughter just for the preservation of others' mindsets. Twinks rubbed his wrist. I was glad he'd let go of mine. "Today," he started, licking his lips, "when we got here, Nya kissed me." His face turned redder. I shifted my feet. A point in time I was not the number one fan to; def not making the top ten favorite evenings list. So far, it looked like it hadn't scored on Twinkies's, either. "You saw it, and, um, afterwards, you gave me the cold shoulder. Now, you know the truth. That she's not my girlfriend or anything."
I narrowed my eyes. This conversation had taken a weird turn. "What's your point?" I snapped. Yeah, I'd given him the cold shoulder… For kissing her, he deserved it. For some reason.
For a tiny moment, Twinkies met my eyes, but quickly flashed his gaze somewhere else. If he has issues meeting my eyes at a dumb conversation like this, you know something's definitely up with his confidence in abstract conversations that could most likely intervene with his natural-born life. Assuming he was naturally born and didn't come out of a test tube, of course. "I just wanted to know…why you gave me the cold shoulder. I mean, like…did it upset you?"
Of all the things he'd say, I never expected that one. It took me enough by surprise to make me drop the squishy-eye act and bulge my blinkers out at him. The question itself was evasive; there was some deeper meaning to it I wasn't willing to amenably investigate. In the end it was still the asked question, and I had no clue how to answer it in the way that would say I knew my own feelings. I hadn't given much thought to why I would do something I didn't really think about, just did it when I had that chance, a type of act that's normally on my daily agenda. I know I'd been a little upset, but, why? That's the part I was lacking in being able to hail respondability to. My turn to stare at the floor finally came around. Okay…this was officially awkward.
"Why do you care?" I snapped. I did it 'cause I was morbidly uncomfortable. I do things, irritated-wise, when I get into that state of mind. Now was often the time for a classic Seiko Insult, but the words never came out of my mouth, much less the thought-process portion that conceived it. Twinkies looked up at me.
"I was just curious."
"It's a dumb question," I turned my back on him, facing the end where Zane and Cupcakes had found their ways to disappearing down. There was no visual telling me which door or path they might've escaped in. "It's not worth a response."
As much as I'd like to hope this was a joke, Twinkies's voice was serious. "Obviously I think it is, otherwise I wouldn't have asked it." I used my shoulder as a look-over and found that organic solemnity spread like jam over his face. I gave him my best Dude look. "I'm serious. I wanted an answer; that's why I asked."
"What's the point? Why do you need to know?" I turned on him. My gaze was sharp, always pointy, like it normally came with me. I liked to have a show of my impression of things, especially when a formidable joy came with the great unveiling of the intentions. His face was a sterling piece of seriousness, but with this edge to it that made me take a deep breath. Some part of me—although I'm not sure how dominant that part really is, I mean, c'mon—looked at him and saw a little kid, woven into his teenage features like an underlying, secret code. The other part of me—surely the bigger side—looked at him and saw someone who was more than willing to jump in front of a speeding bullet to protect people, and his resolution to do what he felt was right was more than treacherous. By that, I mean that he's gonna do what he wanted to do, and this upcoming quarrel definitely was coming to be a desire of his. I put my hands on my hips, fixedly targeting him with a hardened glare, and to be pitifully honest, I think my 'glare' was more vacant than hard.
"Why is it so hard to answer?" He shot me back with his own difficult question. EXCEPT he looked smug when he fired his. He knew he'd hit me. I stuck out my jaw again.
"Because it's a"—the word dumb got stuck in my throat. THANK YOU, Compulsion, you suck—"question I don't feel like answering." I gritted my teeth. Frickin' Compulsion. Now that sentence sounded weak, like it was able to be sunken into, some kind of statement to be said by a Cupcake. I added a pair of pursed lips to it to make him intimidated. As if it even worked. I was increasingly finding myself getting upset. "Get over it and let's move on with our life, Twinkies-slash-Snickerdoodles-slash-Goldy Locks. It's not like you're going to change my ability to answer that question, so let's just pretend that you didn't ask it."
Now, I wasn't expecting the way his face cracked into a smile and laughter swallowed up his belly, making him seem not-so-serious anymore, suffice the humorless tone to it. His small chuckles fell into his hand, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose and tilting his head downwards so he could take a beat. I realized he was doing that to keep patience. Huh. Imagine that. I was irritating Twinkies. "I hate it when you push me away," he grumbled to himself. Words I was most likely not meant to hear.
Regardless I moved to them. "It's what I do," I said honestly, harshly. "Don't like it, that sucks."
"Yeah, but why?" Twinkies raised his head, looking at me insistently. His face was incredulous. What, is he so unwilling to believe I'm that person, or what? Is it so hard to grasp it?
"Because that's who I am," I snapped. This conversation had gone from compliment-compliment to stupid question-downfall argument. I wasn't ever the kind of person who liked to talk about me and have to explain myself to other people. It isn't fair to me, and it isn't fair to anyone else to have to listen to a pointless sob story that gets no one nowhere. How many times had I stood in this same position with Cole, destructing every flighter-plane carrying a message for me in question of why I acted the way I did. The killing is using my own self-defenses that normally destroyed more than just a flighter-plane; it also destroyed a relationship and the trust wrapped around it. My attitude was more than likely the reason why Cole no longer liked me very much—I didn't care if he did, I was fine without other people anyway—to also exenterating his heart. The scalpel was my words. Tipped. Fine pointed. Meaty and evil. His skin was torn apart by me—why didn't he stick up for me? Why didn't he protect me? In our childhood, that had been our bond, protection lethal beyond everyone else's hatred, blossoming greater than even the most fantastic of the world's finest weaponry. It was our trademark. The Mitsuhide siblings were closer than adjoined blood. Everyone around the school knew it, until he passed the age of ten and our ties started to sever. Could we be close as we had once been? No. we couldn't. He would always push me away. He knew who I really was. The day that Cole stopped protecting me was the day that I, as a little girl, vowed I would never, ever feel love again.
It was also the day I got brain trauma from being hit by my father and pushed into the wall. It was a while after my mother had died, when our already epic-fail of a connection was starting to detach further past the breaking point. Cole was sixteen, but I was eleven, just a little girl trying to get past her cunning father and the ugly way she hated him with all her organs. Cole was already having issues with the both of us—every day after school, he'd spend his time with his dark-skinned friend named Jamie and a bunch of other guys and chicks rather than coming home. He'd drop me off then ditch me by myself while my father was always off in the afternoons doing something with his quartet. I had the house to myself most days, except for Saturday and Sunday, when my father was home but working, cooped up in his room. It didn't matter if it was the weekend. Cole would be out all day then go to parties and bonfires at night, never returning until late beyond midnight, creeping into the room when he really didn't need to creep; both my father and I knew where he'd been. The days I spent alone in the house with my father were the days that Lou spent hating me, finding every little reason to yell at me even when it was no big deal, nor even my fault. But the day he pushed me had been the day I'd really become the way that I am today.
I had been in the dining room. A box of leftover pizza that Cole had brought home the night before was sitting there, while I treated myself to that for the lack of nourishment in the cupboards and refrigerator. Cole was in the living room with that Jamie dude, a bag of popcorn, and the video games on, ignoring me completely when I'd slinked in there earlier asking either of them if they wanted to go to the beach. Cole had yelled no at me and told me to walk away. So from there I was busy picking at a piece of cold pizza and tearing off the chunks of meat and throwing them into a napkin. It had seemed like an act that meant nothing, that was really insignificant to the makeup of the universe. But…
My father had come stomping in, his hair as clean and gelled as normal. His face was thin, his eyes sunken inwards. He stared hard at me, like he'd been searching for some misdemeanor in my actions to give him a reason to throw me in a group home. I'd stared back. I hated the way he started yelling immediately. It wasn't needed, but he did it anyway, his voice the only thing I could hear in its angry, loud echoes. I'd cringed. "What are you doing, sitting there? Why aren't you cleaning something like you should be?"
"Uh, 'cause I'm not your maid?" I'd said, rolling my eyes. I hadn't wanted to hear the whole Cinderella punishment again. "You want someone to do it, get one of your girlfriends to clean for you. You have sixteen to choose from. I'm sure one of them would be more than happy to serve an old man, right, Twinkletoes, Senior?" (Twinkletoes Junior was Cole at the time.)
My father had stomped across the floor, yanked me out of my chair. "That is utter disrespect! A disgrace to the family name! Apologize!" At the yelling, Cole had come trotting around the corner, coming to see what we were yelling about this time. He didn't care what it was about…he was just being nosy. I met his eyes, asking for some kind of assistance, but that was where Cole just stared at me, hollow. He was making his decision, and that lack of serenity told me that I was all alone to handle this one. Not that he'd ever helped before, but it was enough to tell me he wouldn't help me in the future, either.
I looked to my father with spit on my lips, just for him. "For what, admitting aloud that you have sixteen girlfriends, or for telling you that I'm not a little bitch you get to throw around like you do to them? Sorry, Lou, slavery was abolished YEARS ago. That might put a damper on your daily plans, but I'm not going to get thrown around by a pretentious asshole like you. Unlike the bimbos you have tailing after you, I actually have DIGNITY."
The slap across the face had come then, hitting me so hard across the cheek that my flesh throbbed like strobe lights. The force of the whack had been so heavy that I, an eleven year old to a mid-thirties child beater, got shoved against the wall. My skull cracked against the hard wood, covered by a cream-colored primer to avert one from discovering the ugliness underneath. Everything in my vision danced with red dots. Something was dripping into my eyes: my blood. As I slid down the wall, hitting the base with helplessness for nothing, I'd found a time to look directly at my brother. In his eyes I saw nothing. No shock, no concern, no startle or shame. Just empty holes that I met. I slowly passed out, hearing my father's voice amid the endless void I was sinking into: "No daughter of mine will speak to me in such a disrespectful way."
I swore that day that I'd never let anyone hurt me again. That I would never feel simple emotion towards another human being, ever ever ever, that I would only file revenge and hatred and all these things that would keep me alive. If I let myself love, then I would be weak, capable of being defeated. There's that saying, "Anyone capable of feeling love is capable of being saved." But in my mind, anyone capable of loving is able to be conquered. They're spineless. Crushable. You can instantaneously demolish them under your pinky toe. It's so easy, because their heartfelt emotions get in the way. Their love, their compassion, their understanding, their selflessness—it's all just a road block. Love holds you back.
"It's who I am," I croaked again to Twinkies, who was looking at me through the fog. My acception of reality was slowly coming back. I turned my chin up to him. Twinkies was someone who loved. He was "capable of being saved." But I wasn't. I wasn't at all. And that's…pitiful. I shook my head, trying to grab the reigns of my mind, but it was starting to do that thing again. My hands started to tremble. "I—it's who I—I'm that kind of person, I—"
It was happening again. Twice in one day, I was beginning to find the meaning in life. Was some kind of higher entity watching over me and trying to change me or something, or was this some kind of weird voodoo thing? It's okay to let go. We will catch you as you fall. I could hear Wu's voice in my head again. By hating people all the time, I wasn't living, not alive, dead girl walking. It wasn't always the compassionate people's emotions that got in the way. It wasn't always their love, their understanding, their competence to help those who needed it like Zane was doing. That wasn't holding them back. They weren't being held back because they were truly living. They were alive, and they were feeling every nook and cranny of humanity with eager hearts and round faces, cheeky grins, slight mishaps to learn from. The people who were being held back…the people who were being malformed by thoughts like mine…they were people who didn't have those emotions. People like me. Who thought that if you didn't care, you were safe. Protected. That was wrong. My past had woven me a lie. All it was doing was pushing me away from people—no, I was pushing people away, and when I did that, I was becoming weak. Weak people were all alone in the world; when they had no one, they were more supple to the ideas of death, darkness, hatred and anger. But if I wanted to be alive—if I wanted to be safe, I was not to be emotionless and cold. I was to be ardent. To be accepting. All I was doing was paving a miserable path for myself to crawl down until I died one day, lonely and afraid and a waste of a lifetime trailing behind me. The knot inside of me, like it had earlier, began to unravel. I was beginning to become unclenched, my dark walls around myself starting to sink. Looking into Twinkies's eyes now, it was like I was seeing myself do this through his senses. I was watching myself release this while he watched it, too—he knew that I was doing this. He knew that I was doing something that was life-changing. I could see it on my face, for crying out loud. The walls were falling. My emotions were bleeding on my face, my pain, my hurt, my eagerness to live like Cole did, to live like Twinkies did creeping over my features, seeping into the pores of my skin like oils. Everything was dripping across my face. Instead of Twinkies looking like the little kid now, it was me. I was looking like a little girl again. I look so weedy, I thought, but that perception was cut short by the police invading my mind now with their living-acceptance policies that I really was starting to get tired of. If I was going to live I had to drop thoughts like that. Those words. It's why Cole took away my freedom; so he could show me how much better it was to live without it.
Oh, my god, Cole. While I'm sitting here hating you from a distance, you were actually trying to help me. Remorse for being so awful in my thoughts towards him flooded past the gates holding those girly emotions back, washing my insides with its restoration of beginning anew-ness, forfeiting my ugly life to the demons that they came from. I could feel the cluttered disgusting and need for simple perfection wrapping me in its tight grounds. Advent emotions contented my insides. My heart was drumming wildly underneath my skin, ghosting its way through my renaissance. I could actually feel it. It was humming. Blooming. Singing or something sissy like that, but the song was making my whole body shake.
I was sucked back into my own body. I literally had another think coming my way. A new thought process. A rebirth of some sorts that was starting to take me over; Twinkies onlooked with the suggestion of a smile on his lips. He reached out to take my hands between both of his. "It's okay," he whispered, bringing me back into his world. I saw every contour of his face, the way his nose was shaped, the cupid's bow of his lips, every individual golden eyelash along his eyes. His golden eyebrows. The birthmark alarmishingly congruent to mine. "It's okay to love." I sucked in a curt, distinct breath. It was to keep my nose from snotting and the weird sting in my eyes at bay. Those beautiful hands, keen borne in my eyes, swaddled my tiny hands between his own. "It really is, Seiko. I was hoping I could do this. Make you feel alive again. That's how I want you to be. Alive."
"Y-yo-ou?" I asked. He did this? I sucked in a breath.
Twi—Lloyd nodded, bending down to my height. "I was trying to trigger an epiphany inside of you, like earlier," he said. "Sensei told me that you only seem to see the world for what it really is when you have one. He also told me that he thought I was the only one you would listen to."
The warmth of my virgin cogitation was still cleansing my icky insides. I could feel the sponge that it came with scraping against my stomach. Butterflies. I'd never had those before. They kind of…tickled.
Was Lloyd the only one I'd listen to? I sniffed. "This is why y-you kept me back here? So you could make me…feel alive again?" I asked. If I wasn't currently undergoing attitude maintenance, I would've punched him in the gut.
He nodded again. "Yeah," he said. I admired our laced hands. He rubbed small circles with his thumb across the back of my hand. It felt…calming. Soothing. I watched them move. I spied a cracked thumbnail. "I know that you have a lot of pent up emotions, and I really wanted to help you. I used to be that way too, until I talked about it. I wasn't as, you know, exorbitantly volatile like you, but I had some unfinished business with my emotions, and they needed to be dealt with. I don't want you to become all…dark and brooding. That is one road leading to disaster." He shook his head. "And besides, I think that you're much more attractive when you're not trying to bite people with your words."
"Attractive?" I repeated. I felt like a frickin' airhead, floating. That, or I was drunk off my ass. Everything was really bright, sucked into my senses in a rush so I could feel it all at once. His eyes were all I could see. Blue. No red.
Only his lips smiled ethereally. "Definitely," he said, and his smile broadened to show a row of white teeth. I sniffed harder. "I'll help you drop the darkness, Seiko. I don't want to lose the fight to your dark feelings. I mean, I know competition can get pretty bad with girls, but I think it would suck if I lost to something inside of you."
My heart thundered. I could hear each individual beat unlike I had ever heard it before, matching the strange thought that the noise had only just been invented a few moments ago, when I felt alive again. My blood ran through my veins, howling like a pack of wolves ready for a fight, their screams wild and heavy enough to frighten someone living in a cabin just off the woods to closing their windows at night. My arms palpitated. Hands, they were freezing against Lloyd's warm palms. "C-competition," I said. I didn't quite get what he meant.
Lloyd's face no longer turned red. Did it only do that when he was lying? He rubbed continuous circles into my skin, effortless into calming me. It was that weird sensation. The um, the way when he touched me he cancelled out all my feelings, that dealio. I… I'm floating on Cloud 9 right now. I can't even think. Rapt to his gaze, my lips dissevered. Both of us were so calm it was unnatural, of course compacted by the striking ability to deface each other's antsy fervor through supernatural connections. "I talked to Kai a little bit about it earlier today, in the car with you when we were first coming here. You were asleep, and I was curious," he annotated. "I'm not very educated when it comes to what girls are all about. I didn't know…exactly how I'm supposed to deal with you." Deal with me. Like I'm some kind of issue? "He told me just to let things happen candidly, the way they should. Then Sensei comes along and tells me I'm the only one who can keep you grounded, because you and I are part of a bigger whole. The Yin and Yang. He said that you and me…we're the same." He lifted our hands in front of him, and to promulgate his goal, reshaped our hands to put our palms together and fingers twined between one another. I looked at my left hand, pushed in coronation with his right. The mark of the eye was pinned across the back of it. The green ink stared back at me with the red dot in the center. His right hand had the same mark, except the red was the assertive color and the green dot was the pupil. The twin Eyes. I watched it stare at me for a second before contacting his eyes again. "Sensei told me that we're two halves of a whole. Together, we're like one entity. One being. We cancel out each other's feelings and powers because we're opposites. We understand each other best. We're a lot like each other, just in a messed up, non-related way. Connected. Right now, the only reason you're accepting the idea of being alive is because I'm not exactly totally pure to my element like I should be, so neither are you. I have venom inside of me, and it's upsetting your darkness into seeing a little of the light because I'm seeing a little of the darkness. It's nature trying to balance us out. But to be honest, I'd rather have you seeing the light if it meant you were happy, you know? I'd like to be a little dark if it meant that you got to see the world how it really is. Feel what it's like to be alive."
I knew he was saying something. Saying something seriously deep. But I, out of fear, ignored it and scoffed a little, turning away the subject from what he was really saying. "You're too selfless for your own good," I wheezed, ragged. I cleared my throat. "It's a bit scary."
"Maybe to you," Lloyd said. He didn't laugh. He tightened his grip on my left hand. "You've never felt this way before. Can you feel your heart beating fiercely? Can you hear everything? Can you feel the cold air fill your lungs when you take a deep breath? Do you feel the way your stomach is fluttering right now, butterflies dancing inside of you?" I could feel everything he was explaining. I swallowed hard. I could hear an abundance of heartbeats engulf my ears.
"You feel it too, then?" I asked. Lloyd nodded. "Is it always going to be like this?" I whispered, feeling sick to my stomach with those butterflies he described eating my organs. "I feel like I just ate a posse of Cupcakes."
Lloyd laughed softly. His eyes were really intense. His face might've been light, secure, and at ease, but his eyes were burning holes into my corneas. His look flickered from my pupils to lower down my face. I started really shaking this time—but not from reality or chills. "No," he said, his hand giving mine a squeeze. "I only ever have this feeling when I'm around you."
My heartbeat seemed to stop and run faster synchronously, as if that were even possible. The words I was trying not to hear were all I could hear, and the butterflies danced the salsa inside of me. My pulse went on rebound, blood soaring through my veins, hot and alive. The adrenaline rush made my cheeks heat, but there was no red to my skin anymore, so the blush was not there. This wasn't good. Though feeling alive was great, this—this feeling in my stomach was killing me. I shook. "Don't…" I whispered, "Don't go all soft on me, Twinkies."
Lloyd smiled. Ah, jeez, why was he such a sedate person? This wasn't—this was making me horrifically uncomfortable—I don't like this. I don't like it anymore. I have to let go of him. We already went through this a couple of days ago, Twinkies, I can't do this to you—Okay, body, let go of his hand now…Let go. Why can't I let go of his stupid hand?
Because you don't want to, said the voice that had made me stop here in the hallway in the first place. I dug my nails into his skin, but without the force to make it hurt. I wanted him to know how scared I was. Lloyd's lips pursed with perceptivity. "Seiko, the only reason I have ever gone soft"—he bent down lower so he could look me directly in the eye, voice lowered—"is because you made me."
Bam. Why didn't he just shoot me in the head, for crying out loud? Don't say that to me, you idiot! I wanted to smack him across the face for saying something so serious. I hoped I could at least say: "Dummy, don't say that," I whispered, but it wasn't very loud.
"Why not? You scared?" Lloyd teased, reaching with his free hand to gently wipe my bangs out of my eyes. I felt cold air hit my newly uncovered skin painfully, but I didn't stop him.
"NO! I am not scared of you. You're Twinkies. Not at all frightening."
Lloyd chuckled. I wasn't afraid of Twinkies. He was, more or less, like a squishy starfish; to me, at least, there was nothing menacing about him. He may be an ass when he's high on Devourer venom, but he's never been anyone who acted only for himself. Everything he does…is for others. The people he cares about, and even the people he doesn't even know. He would rather jump on top of a grenade than have to see someone he loves/ doesn't know suffer. He was charitably chivalrous and it made me want to smack him in the nose every time he did something that didn't come to his name. People like that don't scare me; the things they do, however, are what I'm terrified of. They're unpredictable when it comes to acting for others.
I got the picture that in my "dark days" I wanted to hit Lloyd. I still wanted to hit him, especially now. But I remember a part of my childhood, a part when Cole and I were friends, in which we'd been playing in a park with two other kids. One was a boy, another was a girl; I don't remember, really, who they were, but I know I kept hitting the boy when he pulled a very Twinkie-like operation. Cole had pointed at me and said, "She likes you! She likes you!" It had only been after the fact that I'd been told the reason I kept hitting him was because I liked him. So I stopped hitting people. I punched them instead.
Either way, I now grew numb. I disavow to believe that I want to hit Twinkies all the time because I like him; I hit him because he did something dumb and he deserved a little punishment for it.
Lloyd's hand moved from sweeping my bangs over to trailing down the side of my face, tracing the curve of my chin with his finger. I wasn't liking this. I wasn't liking it at all. It was scaring me just to have him touching me like this; I thought back to my old rules. I'd pledged with the signature of my own blood that I wouldn't ever love again. Would it make me weak if I went back on that staid promise? Would I lose everything if I devoted myself to going back on it, only to find despair at the end of the corridor, awaiting to take me back into darkness? What if, like the last time I'd loved, my heart got broken? Cole and Lou had already seen to making sure that I would never have the trust it would take to be in a committed, healthy relationship with anyone, not even Candice, the nurse back at Sunnyside that I had actually had the willpower to respect. There could only be one bad thing for me to come out of something like this. The bond I had with Lloyd now was just fine; I didn't need to be with him to be fine around him. I couldn't do this. I couldn't be with him.
It's okay to love, he'd said. "But what if I get hurt?" I realized I'd whispered that last part aloud. I regretted saying it on a dime. My visible cringe brought the look on Lloyd's face closer to reality; there was a soft survey in his eyes, waiting for me to collapse. Breathing receded into short intakes, chest heaving every second. I couldn't do this. I was going to get hurt.
His fingers stopped at my chin. "I'm certainly not going to hurt you." He murmured. Didn't he realize he was already hurting me? Lloyd's hand cupped my cheek into his palm, a perfect fit against his warm engraved prints from his skin. My heart pounded faster. All he looked at now was not my eyes, but my mouth, a place I was dreading that he'd touch. I needed to leave him. I couldn't stay. He whispered as he leaned close, eliminating the space between our mouths. I could taste his breath, hot and warm, curling into my nose and parted lips to fill me completely with the hot air, already tasting divine on my tongue. His toxic scent consumed my body in the rivets of his finest human smell, his own personal flavor that I was dying to get a taste of. "The first rule of truly living," Lloyd's voice was low enough for me and only me to hear in my moment of weakness. I stopped breathing altogether when his lower lip barely brushed my upper one to speak, "is to do the thing you're most afraid of."
His lips pressed against mine.
It was an aurora borealis of sensations. His mouth tasted like lip balm, some kind of cherry flavor ordeal that I thought tasted like heaven. It was softer than the best pillow I've ever laid my head on, ten thousand times greater than a Tempur-Pedic bed (which suck to lay on, just so you know) and even a freaking waterbed (which is one of the coolest beds you'll ever sit on) or even a cloud (no, I've never touched one.) An explosion went off, and the butterflies in my stomach were suddenly climbing up my throat and jumping around in my ribcage, planting this vomit-y feeling with their seeds of butterfly annoying-ness wherever they happened to sit. My heart stopped thundering in my chest. I thought maybe for a second I was dead. But I could suddenly feel nothing but Lloyd's hands, my recovery coming quick enough to find them both, my left hand free, trailing down my back. Crawling drowsily over the material of my shirt, headed for the small of my back, clasping together there and splaying his fingers wide. He pulled me closer to him. Our kiss deepened, and once again I was demoralized by my own heart spasms. My hands were shaking against his chest. I could understand why my cheeks were flaming, why my mind was buzzing without reasonable doubt, presumable cause to be fluctuated. His mouth urgently worked against mine, face moving in sync with my own, pulling me closer to eliminate the dreary space between us that neither of us wanted to exist. My hands climbed up his neck, and tangled in the hair I'd wanted to touch since I first met him. It was as soft as linens between my fingers, twisted and knotted around my nails, a ribbon of golden in my hands. It was actually a lot less plush than his lips…
Lloyd, you twit… You're making me think like a friggin' Cupcake, you jerkass. The palpation between us made my eyes squeeze shut. I couldn't breathe at all. It seemed like Twinks had the same idea on deck too.
And then it was over. Too soon, our kiss ended with an agonizing click. The kiss took twenty minutes to me, but to the real world it was only a few seconds, either way becoming extremely harrowing. How could he do that to me? My head fell against his chest, between my own two hands. I could hear his heart thundering underneath his chest. Twinkies is scared? I thought, traveling back to his great motif of life before he'd smooched my face without permission. The first rule of truly living is to do the thing you're most afraid of. Was that a core exemplar he was trying to teach me, or was it meant for the both of us?
Our breathing was ragged, uneven, never matching the breath of the other. I closed my eyes and let me bury myself in the Downy his shirt was washed in for a little while longer, his chin settling on the crown of my head, arms locking me in some sort of cradle that was meant to be comforting but missed the mark. This was definitely against all my rules. But right now those rules sounded like a joke to me. I couldn't take them seriously anymore. In my heart, though its din was quiet enough to still be there but also be forgotten easily, was that alive feeling, broadened under the sweet, cherry-flavored brush of Twinkies's lips. There was nothing I wanted more right now than to keep my face right where it was, count each individual heartbeat that came out of his huge heart, and fall asleep to that very ticking of an inner life force, gorged by my own swallowing of stones. I had just kissed Twinkies McSnickerdoodles. I'd kissed him. Holy friggin' crap.
This was not good.
Lloyd's hand stroked my hair. He pressed his lips to my hair. "Now that," he said, breaking the tension between us, "should've been my first kiss."
I gave a dry laugh for his satisfaction. But in my stomach was this awful confusion of gnats instead of the epic butterflies that had swarmed in our epic moment. I knew what we'd just done was wrong, and it had to be put to rest. I couldn't let this go on any further than just this. I'd already complicated enough with my apex of sinful discoveries and actions, stumbling upon something this humanly normal needed a good coming to a crude halt. I squeezed shut my eyes. To say this took away my heart—I could feel it being ripped out of my chest with the words uttered in scared truancy from the grounds. "It shouldn't have happened at all," I croaked. Lloyd nudged the top of my head with his chin.
"What, exactly, does that mean?"
I detached myself from him, coming into terms with my own breathless hurt. I broke all physical contact I had with him, painstakingly harmful to my innards, to look him in the eye. Jeez, I hope my face isn't bleeding the way it feels like it is… Lloyd's eyes were technical. "You just stepped into a wire trap there, dude. This thing we've got going…" I waved to the space between me and him. "It's not going to work."
"Why?"
"I don't…" I looked at his puppy dog eyes. Aw, c'mon, seriously. He was whipping out the honkin' Bambi right in front of me? No. No, thou art not guilting me into doing thy bidding! Nuuu. I stuck out my chin. "We can't do this. This couples' thing you want us to have, it's not going to happen. I don't…I can't be with you."
"Why not?" He pressed. The Bambi eyeballs widened. NO. DON'T YOU DO THAT! I wanted to HIT him—
Noooo, no I don't.
I'M SO CONFLICTED!
Okay, get a hold of yourself, Seiko, you're being stupid. You need to chill out here. Remember that those who feel things are spineless, and in the end it's those who don't give into their emotions that make the higher—
"Anyone capable of love is capable of being saved," Lloyd told me, breaking out of my inner monologue. How did he know that? REALLY? I must've shown that one on my face, 'cause he tapped the back of his right hand. That damn Eye. I clenched my fists. "And besides, as much as I'd love to sit here and torture you with that phrase, I know that what you're saying right now isn't really what you want."
"Oh, yeah?" I challenged. "How would you know anything about me?"
Lloyd gave me his best really? look. There's no word I can think of that would describe it at the moment. "Because I've spent a month and a half with you locked up in the Underworld, and everyone who reads your narrative probably knows just who you are, too." My face pinched. He shook his head impatiently, waving it off. "Never mind. Look, Seiko, the point is that both you and I know that you're just saying those things because you're scared of what might happen. You don't know what might happen, and that scares you. But didn't we just go through this? It's okay to love," he said, speaking in a way that he would use if he were talking to someone who's given up all hope. He reached out to me with his vocal Lloyd (ha, see what I did there?) way of doing things, using his hands to sweep me into the honesty of a gentleman's voice. He pulled me closer again by my forearm. "And I want you to know that it doesn't matter what you look like, what you sound like, what your own twisted sense of humor revolves around or what color your eyes are, or if you're only five feet tall, or what kind of jokes you make, if you're a vegetarian or a vegan—remember that conversation?—or if you would rather throw turtles at a lobster house in your free time. None of that matters to me. I'm not going to judge you, and I'm not going to hurt you, and I can promise both of those things. I don't break my promises. I just want you for who you are. I don't care if you dye your hair purple, for cheese's sake." He reached up and brushed my anchored bangs that everyone seemed to love toying with as a usable for their hands to do when just standing in my propinquity. This time, they stayed tucked behind my ear, leaving my eyeball exposed, my birthmark naked, and my usual curtain to hide behind tapered away. I shivered when his fingers came up to gently stroke my cheeks from both sides. Lloyd's bright blue eyes were now the only thing I could see. "If I'm with you, I'll protect you with everything I have. Not that I wouldn't do it anyway, but you have a guarantee that you're safe. I'm not going to hurt you," he repeated. "And no one else will. Just because you're a little 'off,' in your terms, has never turned me away. I still want to be with you. And I still care about you, and I still like you. Just the way you are."
I smiled, in spite of myself. I didn't want to admit how much I loved that he was holding my face between his hands, or how I could smell him again, or how I was loving every word that came out of his posh little mouth. In my life, all I'd ever wanted to hear was that someone was okay with who I was. I certainly never heard that from either of the two dominant male figures in my life, but Lloyd had just told me everything I'd ever wanted to be told. He was okay with me, and that made it okay to be myself, especially now with this lively feeling dancing in my stomach. Maybe he was right, leaving it okay for me to love, let some of my guard down and allow everyone in, to show them that every part of me was now able to feel some emotion. Anyone capable of feeling love is capable of being saved. Did it mean that I could be saved if I let the people around me in?
"It's okay," Lloyd whispered, in turn pulling me close again. I closed my eyes with the anticipation of having his lips connect with mine, to feel them warm my own, soft and completely delectable—
"WAAAIIIIITT!" yelled a voice. We both practically jumped out of our skins hearing the loud girl's voice come screeching out of nowhere, taking Lloyd to peering over his shoulder and me eyeballing the girl who appeared from around his arm. I swear, I hadn't even heard or sensed her coming. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a messy ponytail made up of curly red hair, and her face was a weird circle shape. Her eyes were brown, but her eyebrows were blonde, and she had a pair of green reading glasses at the end of her nose. She was wearing pajamas printed by panda bears and bamboo. In her hands was a clipboard and a perfectly sharpened pencil. Something told me that she was a little rough around the edges. She waved her fingers at us. "Not to bother you, but I'm going to have to stop you from your little make-out session in the middle of the hallway."
"What?" Lloyd opened his mouth, but she did a quick open of her hand, close of her hand to indicate silence. He obeyed.
"Who are you?" I snapped.
The girl smiled at me thinly. She talked fast. "Would you believe that I'm having a bad day? It's just been a serious dragger for me, especially my inability to write a really good chapter for my readers. Yeah, keep staring at me like that, Mitsuhide, because I can totally eliminate you from existence if you tip the bush. You don't want that, and neither do I, because you're pretty popular with the fans, got it? So don't tempt me. Now, you're probably going to stare at me like I'm speaking Bulgarian, but I have just been fed up with people and their OC's today, and I'm sorry to say that this little 'moment'"—she did air quotes, holding her arms out on either side of her with the clipboard still tacked to her palm by two fingers and a thumb—"is extremely obnoxious. I'm starting to go really mainstream and I'm hating that NfaN is taking that turn. BUP! No questions," she zipped her lips at me when I opened my mouth, pointing at me with a short-fingered nail like it was the last thing I'd ever see. "What did I say about erasing, Mitsuhide? It's not that hard for me to write a chapter where you die and stay dead! I did it to Darreth, didn't I? He was a pedo anyway, but that's not the point here. It's certainly not going to be hard to do to you. Now, on a much more exempt note, I'd rather not do something so horrifically overdone in the world of Fanfictia to NfaN just because you people are incapable of getting out of my brain, so I am going to politely ask you to stop your kissing thingy"—she moved her pencil hand in a wide circle—"now, okay? You're cute and all, but I don't think anyone will be pleased with this chapter when it's published. Although I do like to string things along and make my readers have to wait for the birth of Nya's vampire baby, I didn't have this whole spiel in mind. Actually, I wasn't even going to have this happen, but I'm feeling a little girly today, so why the hell not?" She shrugged, pulling her clipboard into the cradle of her arm and stabbing her pencil furiously against the paper attached to it, scribbling down something important. "Now, I probably just lost half of my fanbase doing this to you two and indulging in my more frillish Cupcake side, and if that's the case, I'm going to kill you in the future, Seiko, and make Lloyd suffer through something ugly because you both are, frankly, pissing me off."
"Hey, chill, man. What…" Lloyd cleared his throat, standing a little taller. The girl's focus was down her clear lenses at the piece of paper clinging to the roster pressed against her chest. The panda published on her shirt lacquered a blank look of stupidity I loathed. "How are we pissing you off? We're just standing here."
The girl ripped the paper off her board, folded it with one hand, and passed it along to me like a prescription or speeding ticket. "I guess it's just that time of the month, Twinkies." She said, rewarded by a snort out of me as I unfolded the paper. "You can expect more tragedies at my wrath in the future of your currently two-and-a-half book lifeline, unless I really do take up renewing you for Season Two. We'll see how it goes. But I demand NO MORE SISSY SHIT, and if my sister even dares to beg that I continue with your little relationship, I'm going to go berserk and chop off the head of one of your friends."
I read the words on the paper, confounded by literature at the most. I held it between both hands between my thumb and forefinger, but my bent head over the scripture was upturned when I gave her a mystified look. "If you have that kind of power over everything, why aren't you chopping off the head of, I dunno, say, KAOS?"
The girl pointed a finger at me again. I wanted to bite it off. "Don't get snippy, Mitsuhide! I don't do it because I have a finale planned for the end of this book and I will not have it ruined by you. I have to at least keep you alive for a little while longer, but don't consider my previous threat revoked. Force will be used if necessary." One brisk nod finalized her argument of one. She glanced at her roster, cradled in her arm childishly, one last time. "Now, if I'm correct—and I am—you're about to forget that I was just standing here, and I'm going to tend to the baby that's squalling and crapping herself in her crib. Don't forget the promise I made." Her lips pressed in a thin, pink line, a random streak across the lower half of her face. Her voice dropped to a menacing interval. "I have the power to kill you. Beware my unforgiving soul, for thou ist not safe with the vowel and consonants of N-F-A-N." The girl snapped her fingers, and just like that, disappeared into thin air.
I stared at the paper in my hands, the previous conversation we'd just had with a stranger erased from my mind. I hadn't known where it had even come from—the words were written in neat cursive, slanted and timeless, against a white sheet of blank paper. The ink was manufactured in the color orange. Strangely enough, I'd no idea where that piece of paper even came from, or even the knowledge that they mass-produced pens with such a ludicrous color. I looked to the words and tilted my head. "What's that?" asked Lloyd from in front of me, moving to my side so he could read the words I did. This paper, for all I knew, had equivocally appeared in my hands in the blink of a few seconds.
"You know, I actually have no clue."
You two might be so adorable to my little sister, but guess what, Twinkies McSnickerdoodles and Doppelganger Central—I don't know if you two being together is the best idea. Seriously. Have we considered that this is a No Romance grounds only, exceptions made for the Jaya/Coya love triangle and the little Kai issue? Sure, I did spit out this chapter because I'm having a pretty sh*tty day and wanted some girly recognizance, but guess what? I still don't know if I want you two to be together. Like, c'mon. I'm hating on a lot of people right now. I am seriously hating Danielle, and I'm seriously hating Caroline, and the insurance guy who keeps calling my phone asking for Cory, whom I don't know. I DON'T HAVE INSURANCE! And you know what, I feel like bitchin' out on everyone but Rikku today. Rikku is so innocent he has nothing to do with this. And plus, he's charging in a room you guys haven't seen yet cuz you're so busy making out in the hallway. So, consider Rikku just this cute little fluffy pillow in the corner that deserves candy. Either way, I want to slap both of you. But more importantly, I want to slap myself. This is currently 27 pages of absolutely nothing but Kairi-like boringness, and I hope to goodness that I didn't just get docked a few fans. So with your lifelines hanging over your heads, let's keep this filtered, alright? I'M HAVING AN UGLY DAY. DON'T RUIN IT ANY MORE THAN YOU ALREADY HAVE.
If you'll excuse me, I have a Zane to go tickle and an Emily to create.
Best regards, Kairi.
I stared hard at the letter in front of me. "What the hell just happened?" I asked of what I had read, finding myself tangled in some weird prank I thought might be pulled by the despicable Twinks himself, but his face disbanded any kind of qualm I may have had. He met me with a dropped jaw.
"Who's Kairi?" He asked, gently depriving me of holding the printer paper. He held it awkwardly with his wrist jutted out and his hand arresting it upside down from the top of the page. His brow bone furrowed. "And Emily? And why does she hate Danielle and Caroline? And why is she tickling Zane?"
I encountered something light falling onto my head. I reached up to find a pink Post-It note hewed to my hair. It was in the same cursive. "'Because Danielle is annoying and Caroline needs to stay dead,'" I read aloud. I flipped the note over at the skinny arrow suggesting I do so, slashed over the bottom of the square note. "'Emily is a robot that Zane would know. Yuki is also a robot. Zane is ticklish. 'Nuff said, Fro-Yo.'" I snorted, inclining my head to look up at him. Lloyd didn't turn his head to me, but let his eyes flicker into my own with the first note pendulous in front of his face. My mouth smothered a grin. "You just got called a Fro-Yo," I giggled. Lloyd rolled his eyes at me and playfully jabbed my waist with a free finger. I danced around another injection from his long phalange. It tickled to be poked. "Maybe Kairi is a ghost who has the power to deliver cryptic messages at will, some kind of omen from the Other Side." I giggled again. I found my own statement funny. Say whatcha want.
Lloyd dropped the note to his side. "I never read anything about a Yuki," he said.
A flutter against my head again brought my hand to my crown, pulling from my tangle of black hair a blue Post-It note instead. I pried the sticky adhesive barred across the upper rim to the back of the cerulean epistle from my fingers. "'Give it a second. You will.'" I chortled. I actually found this amusing, though Lloyd seemed a little bothered by it. "Doesn't this remind you of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? He had that empty journal, and he was writing questions in it, and some creepy thing controlled by Tom Riddle's spirit was answering back through the journal."
Lloyd's countenance told me he did not. "I have never been affiliated with Harry Potter," he told me.
"NO? C'mon, dude, you're missing out." I nudged him with the back of my wrist. He didn't budge under the press of the prod against his bicep. "The nurses played it in the commons all the time at Sunnyside. Hell, it gave everyone nightmares, but they kept arguing that it was a classic to be had. The patients much rather would've watched Gnomeo and Juliet for lack of violence and hard-to-follow concepts, but that's them."
"I do believe it is Romeo and Juliet," said a voice. Lloyd twisted his hips backwards for a better look. I stopped simpering to peer around Lloyd's body at the boy shoddling down the hallway, a first aid kit in his arms. Okay, I'm not going to lie: I thought he was a chick. His hair was bleach-white, pulled back from his face in a long, straight ponytail off the back of his head. His eyelashes were inches longer than mine, black, scraping against his eyebrows for their length, and I found the irises to these aberrant, WIDE eyes the color of sand. His mouth was small, full, like a doll's mouth is: tiny, but puckered perfectly. Do you understand what I mean? The glossy skin to his lips was fundamentally blinding. I could see thousands of women just dying to get them—they were the shape that most wanted, the Barbie outline that they tried to achieve with injections of Botox and craploads of cash spent on plastic surgery.
So, if you're wondering how I know it's a he—it was a) the way he was walking and b) the flat chest. Not all girls packed a punch when it came to breasts, but this guy just wasn't pulling it off. The purpose of this might've been to look like a girl, but some part of me knew he was born that femininely accursed.
I thought for a moment. "Yuki?" I said when he came upon us, stopping. His tall leather boots, fitted to his calves, ended at the jeans taking up the rest of his lower half, puckered above by a tucked-in kimono revealing a slit's opening to his chest. His sandy gaze turned to me.
"May I help you?" He said, cleaving the first aid kit between both hands. The red plus on the front took up the middle of the bag. He had a nice, soft voice. He struck me as the type that didn't yell. I smugly flippered Lloyd with my hair. What's funny is that Lloyd looked canoodled out of his own wits. He was shorn off by staring at Yuki the She-man.
"Where are you off to?"
His wide eyes nictitated. He literally looked like he had doe eyes every day, some kind of blank, giant anime gaze that wouldn't ever get erased. His eyelashes took up half his cheeks upon blinking them. "I was told to get this and return it to the infirmary for a clumsy redhead who gave himself a paper cut with a waiver. There were no remaining Band-Aids in the right wing infirmary, so I had to go to the left wing to get the other kit."
"Jay," Lloyd nodded in understanding. I cleared the hair out of my face with a blow of my breath.
"May I ask who you two are?" Yuki rearranged the kit in his hands so he could bow respectably for us. "I am Yuki Akamatsu."
"Hi, Yuki," I said, already fond of this robot by the way he was so chaste. He literally seemed not to have a clue why the sun rose and set every day. It was hilarious. I stuck out my hand in the traditional Ninjean way. Yuki didn't know what to do with it. After a moment, the perplexed droid awkwardly stuffed a hand into mine, his arm twisted all wrong, no longer part of a handshake but a weird cultivated arm symbol. I laughed, conceding that he could depart with the uncooperative greeting. "I'm Seiko Mitsuhide."
Yuki beamed in a friendly welcome. He looked to Lloyd. I watched the Green Ninja give a skeptical nod of hello; I guess guys were too cool for anatomical hospitality or something. "Lloyd Garmadon. Is it rude of me to ask that you're a guy, right?" I elbowed Lloyd's up-front question, glad that he'd asked it instead of me. "Sorry, I'm just confused…"
Yuki shook his head. "I am asked that question more often when I appear in public. I am not offended. Yes, I am of the male gender. I am not trying to portray myself as a woman; believe it or not, I was unfortunately born with these features, and given them again by Dr. Juliens."
"So you ain't no drag queen? Nice, Yuki!" I liked him. He wasn't giving me any spiffy vibes. He was pure in his aura just like Zane.
He didn't give me a reaction. That's when I saw his eyes doing the same thing Rikku's did: they were focusing and unfocusing. A chill skulked up my spine. I wondered why that was a constant thing with these robots—"Hey, why are your eyes doing that?" I asked. Better to be up front about it.
Yuki touched his cheek lightly. "They are perceiving lies, as well as signs of distress, to warn me about danger in my subjects. It helps me determine what might happen in ten seconds."
"So every second, your eyes do that?"
They moved. "Affirmative."
It was creepy, but a nice skill. It would be cool if I had that ability, too, so I could whoop ass when someone thought they were more clever than me with their lies. Lloyd's crossed arms were tugged on by moi. "Why don't your eyes do that?" I asked. He rolled his eyes, but never answered me.
"I must get back to the right wing." Yuki pulled the kit into both hands again, opened his digits across the surface, and nodded to each of us once. He had a slick way of cutting things off, didn't he? "It was a pleasure meeting the both of you. I look forward to seeing you around the monastery in the future." With that, Yuki walked around my left side, passing me daintily in lack of goodbye smile or any human-like trait. I waved at his shrinking back. The vanishing point in the hallway made it stretch further beyond me, a vast square that Yuki was starting to condense into.
"BYE, YUKI!" I cried. He lifted a hand to unceremoniously ratify my cry, kind of a startle because I thought he was going to do this whole formal departing thing with his conformed attitude, but he decided not to waste time to face me off. Lloyd became the center target of my attention thereupon the robot's adieu. I wrapped my arms around his waist, dug my chin into his chest, and twitched my nose. Lloyd curled his arms around my upper back. The feeling of my own blood warming my skin made me turn my cheek to the cotton of his jacket, the cold bar of zipper itching coolly. "Should we go find Zane?" I asked. I didn't want to abdicate myself from Lloyd's embrace, but I certainly didn't want to stand in this hallway anymore. My chin pressed into his chest again.
Lloyd took a minute to answer. "I suppose." He brushed softly my hair from my face, taking my bangs away again. "You need to pin those back," he told me. "Otherwise, the temptation to have them hang in your face seems a little too hard to handle, huh."
"Duly noted."
He took my hand in his. My heartbeat soared alongside the suction of our cupped hands meeting. "C'mon," he said, jerking his chin towards the hall. Something in his eyes stayed that I had never seen there before, a new light cracking in the dawn of a new emotion. "Let's go catch up with the others."
Challenges are always my favorite past-time. They're what make me competitive enough to try hard. I think I do better under the circumstance that I have to form a contender, with that kind of pushing, provoking me into action. I gave Lloyd's hand a confident squeeze. "Last one there is a rotten Twinkie!" I shouted. I ripped my hand out of his, taking off down the isolated hallway. I really had no clue where I was going, just that I was going to run with this! Yeah, I know, lame pun, lame pun. But aren't all puns lame?
"Hey, no fair!" I heard him shout behind me. I laughed.
A carefree feeling spread through me. It takes more effort to feel nothing than it does to feel something, I noted, whirling around to run backwards. "All is fair in love and war!" I called, detouring down the first doorway I came to. I stepped inside of the next shortened hallway for what looked like a Laundromat inside of a building. How much is the water bill here? There are about six hundred washers and dryers in that room. I gazed sideways in mid-run.
My body slammed into someone else's.
I was threatened of falling on my ass, but someone's hand reached out to grab my wrist, pulling me from my slanted position back onto my own feet through a strength I could feel. I looked down at the pair of ancient sandals, native only to museums, with black bandage wrapped around each calf. "Seiko?" I heard Lloyd's voice from behind me. I found more interesting subject matters to be had with; my eyes trailed up the slick pair of pants and matching black kimono to the long curls of golden hair spilling long over someone's shoulders, the sliver of chest permitted as a triangle mid-way down a man's chest, following leaders up to the flawless outline of a thin jaw, climbing all the way up the sculpted nose and defined cheekbones to the light, golden eyes of a ninja. A tight black mask was wrapped around his stiffened throat, used for covering his lower face, but detruded so pale lips could be seen, twisted into an annoyed curve. He pushed a long, untamed wave of golden curls over his broad shoulder and gave me a scrutinizing, hampered guise. I stared short of breath. He was beautiful, even more so than Yuki. No, Yuki was just cute in the way you looked at bunnies. This guy had the potential to be the supernatural love interest of many adult, M-rated novels, the ones you saw at the bookstore pictured with a half-naked woman and a shirtless, sweaty guy standing on the sea shore with their hair being all blown epically. I dribbled drool all over my chin. No, I didn't really. But in my head I did. "Who…?" in their right sorts was that breathtakingly attractive? Something was definitely wrong with this picture. Had I slammed into the wall, died, and gone to heaven?
"I'm Daijiro Hitoshi," he snapped irritably. "And who, exactly, might you be?"
BURNING FAN QUESTION: Give me your favorite quote/s of the chapter. There's craploads to choose from. You really shouldn't have a hard time.
My favorite part of this chapter is Yuki. He's going to make up for stupid CAROLINE AND DANIELLE FJHSTJHSJIFNSJIRGHGUISDHRSJE efrwieuriejdnjFEHRJHEDNWIEHTDSJNDFSDF *dies* i KILL THEM BOTH IN MY BRAIN. I just don't like either of them. Not cuz they're evil, but cuz they're just stupid.
As you can tell...I had a bad day. -3-
So since this was so long...
Thanks. Go have an awesome day/night!
