A/N: just a little something I wrote a long time ago but discovered only recently. Don't ask me, the story wrote itself ^__^
Disclaimer: I no own.
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Pierrot
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
- Albert Einstein
Hiiragizawa Eriol. What could be said about the mysterious boy? the girl wondered. After much deliberate — not to mention senseless and nerve racking — pondering, the raven-haired girl came to the conclusion, which quite plainly explained the nature of the subject of her inquisition: he was a clown. Albeit he never wore the traditional baggy pants and the overly exaggerated facial make-up that usually were associated with the jester, but he was nevertheless a clown.
The girl sighed, her breath coming out in rugged rasps as she continued to ponder on the subject of her scrutiny and, to her discomfiture, desire. Hiiragizawa Eriol. Hiiragizawa-kun. Eriol. She mentally bellowed his name. The man was an impossible brute! He was an enigma that virtually sent her reeling with excitement and anticipation at the concept of untangling it. Everything about the man positively screamed mystery, which is particularly why she found herself so drawn to him. Logic itself did not explain Hiiragizawa Eriol. In fact, the man in question seemed to completely defy logic and the whole of human knowledge and understanding, for that matter.
He had this funny way of dealing with everything around him, particularly everything that was painful to him, she mused. Where the normal person would muster up the courage to look at the pain and confront it head on, despite the retaliation, and where the usual oddball of the society would ignore the hurt, Hiiragizawa Eriol did neither. He did not fight it, nor did he run and hide or pretend it didn't exist. Oh no, he would have none of that. Instead, he absorbed all of the sorrows and pains, and bore them bravely inside him. He voluntarily gave away his own happiness so everyone else was happy. So selfless was he.
The whole prospect of this seemed perplexing to the young lady who found herself contemplating this, though the idea was not new to her. Eriol certainly had nothing to gain from it. Why did he do it, though? Was it his love for humans? Or was he feeling an extreme sense of pity and felt it necessary to lessen the burden of the human kind? Was he then so caring that he dismissed his own needs so that he could see the smile on people's faces last a couple of minutes longer? And what kind of a mastermind was he to pull the façade on so well that no one ever doubter the authenticity of the image?
He was an actor, in his own right, and the world was his stage. Every day he would go out to the world and put a smiling mask on his face for everyone to see. He was prone to be rather loquacious and was often found to be perpetually cheerful, a broad grin that rivalled the Cheshire's Cat plastered on his face. She, though, knew better. She could see and feel the sadness radiating off of him. She saw it in his eyes. The unbearable pain hidden behind the twinkle and the glisten that a smile usually added to his face. It was like a dark, misery-filled wall that surrounded, and threatened to overwhelm him.
There was unspeakable loneliness and sadness behind those sapphire depths that she had the rare chance to witness — usually when he was found deep in thought or engrossed in watching the couples in the park. And then, with an undecipherable lurch in her heart and a twinge of something resembling pity running down her spine, she found herself wanting to share his pain, wanting to know the real him behind the smiles and jokes and perhaps be a comfort to him.
She often sat at her desk during yet another tedious school lesson and let her mind wander astray, her thoughts running wild with her imagination. She realized with some unwanted — and rather unexpected — glee that she wanted to see Eriol smile, really smile, without the masks and the lies. She also wondered what it would feel like to have him in a comforting embrace, soothing away all his sorrows. This last image baffled the girl somewhat, but she dismissed it as some maternal instinct. Something she had not had the chance to experience, but wanted to share it anyway.
And he wasn't just the epitome of a pierrot on the inside. His visage bore an unbelievable resemblance to a fragile porcelain doll, though masculine enough. His face was pale; so pale in fact that she had to at times wonder whether or not, indeed, the owner of the face was a life-sized puppet. The only features distinguishing the boy as a living, breathing creature were his livid blue eyes framed by round spectacles and accentuated by his dark mass of unruly raven hair. His eyes spoke of his true age, one that only a select few (including herself) knew, of his troubles and of his mission in life. Delicate, soft lips adorned his face, and a straight nose gave way to his aristocratic lineage. Why did he hide it? Discretion, perhaps?
Very few people, if none at all, knew Hiiragizawa Eriol, the thought of which made the girl yearn to be one of the precious few. She found herself smiling broadly at the thought that they both shared at least one thing: their love for music.
Both parties were extremely talented in the field of music, at one point each had held the title of the most gifted resident in their small community of Tomoeda. Eriol had brilliant hands; strong yet with long and delicate fingers, the same digits often running through complex scales of the piano. While she herself had the voice of a Siren, which she had always known that it needed something to complement it.
Once, after another monotonous days of studies and tests, she found herself outside the music room, a faint melody drifting from the closed door. Curious, she opened the door slightly and peeped in. Above the dark wood of the piano, a mass of dark hair was visible. As the notes drifted through the air in the tiny room, filling the atmosphere with a melancholy tune, it struck her odd. Although the scales were played with perfect precision and the images that usually followed a beautifully played piece were there, the music reminded her of a tedious litany.
It was at that instance that the sky metaphorically brightened and the clouds parted in revelation. She knew her problem, that annoying itch slightly under the surface of her being. What she needed was completion, something that would not only emphasise her voice but would also lift it and make it better, accentuating it with touches of togetherness and oneness at the same time.
Later on, she discovered the identity of the mysterious pianist. Not surprisingly, it was Hiiragizawa-kun. From thence on, she vowed to help him gain that certain zest that he was lacking, from which she would also benefit. If only he would let her. If he could stop pretending that his world was a sunny place where everything is just peachy and show her the darkness within... She could help him; she knew she could, had known it for some time.
Hah! What does he know? He is a simpering fool! She thought with frustration. He was a blind man painted with prismacolour pencil crayons. Beneath that mask of his, between those layers of self contempt and overly ostentatious chivalry was nothing but a small boy whimpering, crying for help, begging for someone to come along and help him to find a way through the perennial darkness. She was willing to help; she would spend her entire life, even if in the sidelines, in constant vigilance to find a path for that little boy.
Oh, why can't he look at me? The girl wept silently. Why can't he see? I'm here. I'm always here.
He who juggles more colourful balls than he can fathom, he who tugs the strings of many hearts (including her own) and plays with knives of misery and pain. The clown who changes his masks as often as Death takes on paramours, yet whose true face is known only in myths and legends told to children by the fireside. The same face has been forgotten in the vastness of time and the confusion of his venture. Why can't he give up his game? Is he so fascinated with his gambit that everything else is a dull bore? Nothing more than mere 'here' and 'now'?
One day, the girl vowed, she would unravel all the layers, untangle all the knots and twists that had somehow managed to take over his mind. She, and she alone, will find that little boy within, and it would be her that he would see through his newly opened eyes. And whence he is set free, he will finally see her, standing there amongst the shadows, waiting for him to take notice, and he would.
Walking along the sidewalk, she watched a couple huddled under one measly umbrella make their way towards the park, knowing nothing but the other's sweet embrace. Would that be her some rainy afternoon? Were her thoughts and hopes given a physical magnification, only in a different body? Were they a monochrome image of what could possibly be?
The lovebirds passed by, sparing no glance at the girl without an umbrella, nor to the heavy water droplets that occasionally came crashing down to terra firma. Sighing, she cleared her of the unwanted thoughts, following the trail of puddles to an abandoned swing set. Sitting down on one of the swings, her mind took her on another roller coaster ride to Hiiragizawa-land, full of gloom on a gloomy day.
"Mind if I join you?" A soft baritone asked from behind her.
Nodding solemnly, she gestured to the swing next to hers, keeping her eyes on the mud pooling at her feet. Stealing a glance at the boy beside her, she noted the regal pose and the far-away gaze. The clown erected another mask, a sombre one this time, shielding the boy from view and showing the man. That lurch of the heart again and the temptation to hold and cherish besieged the girl.
"The wind is whispering," he said quietly. "Listen, it sings a lullaby through the leaves."
She listened, straining her ears towards something that was not quite there but overwhelmingly everywhere at the same time. She heard it, the breeze touching the wet leaves, and the contact creating one harmonious sound, other noises of varying pianissimo joining the original. A melody that dwindled in the wind and gradually amplified as it spread through the entire row of trees.
"It's amazing," she said gazing at the multi-coloured foliage, individual leaves taking shape, as if they were mere splats of gold and crimson-tinted hues before. "It is as if both the wind and the trees have transcended their plain state to create something more wondrous than either of them could create individually."
"Exactly," he replied, the clown turning to face the girl, his eyes shining with their own kind of brilliance. "Without one, the other is nothing more than a flashy shell, a shield to hide its nothingness."
"Together they complete the vista, accentuating each other, crafting something new and inconceivably beautiful." She finished for him, her thoughts swirling with the wind. It came to her then that the masks were just as important for Eriol as air was necessary to live. Without the clown, the string drawn pierrot and the ostentatious masks, he was just a dot in the gargantuan universe. The façade, though a web of lies, was his true face and the emotions he hid inside made him who he was.
Standing up from the weather beaten swing, the girl turned to face Eriol, who in turn was looking up at her. "Do you want to come over for tea?" She asked softly, turning her face to the sun that started to peek out from underneath grey clouds. Swathed in layers of self-made armour, the clown only needed time before she solved his puzzle.
"Sure," he said, his voice barely above a whisper; she hears it anyway, the question ringing in her head like the bells of Christening.
She smiled, a timid smile that made her eyes light up with the gleaming sun. Taking her hand, Eriol leads her towards the exit, his navy blue umbrella forgotten beside the now deserted swing set. The girl's heart soars above the trees, above the birds and way into the stratosphere, there to linger with the stars.
She could feel the mask cracking, a vein-like pattern forming on the smooth porcelain, tiny bits of psychological mortar shattering once they reached the hard ground. Sure it was only the first of many masks — thousands she thought — but even that little fracture brought her closer to unravelling his mystery. The clown might be a valiant sentinel, but time and patience was on her side and she was determined to achieve her goal.
As the two left the park, seeing little but each other, the rain altogether stopped, the dark clouds retreating from the horizon. The sun projected golden rays through the leaves, landing on the puddles and washing them with a brilliant glow. The wind died down to a mellow breeze, caressing the trees and creating yet another melody.
Finis