Disclaimer: X isn't mine. It's clamp's.
Deep Inside of You
by Miyamoto Yui
Chapter 4 - Never Told You.
"Despite everything I've done...until now...You still love me..." a radio played in the air as a car passed by.
That was the trigger, I think.
By now, I knew life wasn't full of coincidences. They were just full of incidents that made them seem so.
Smiling to myself, I started to look down to the ground while I bit on my fingernails swaying a bit from where I stood. As the sprinkling rain patted on the soft earth of this early morning, a tear finally fell down my cheek as I blew into my handkerchief. But, despite it all, I was keeping up the smile that I had learned to plaster upon my crying mask.
Makeup did wonders, that I knew. Actresses used them all the time. I knew I did...
I did it all the time.
From far away, I had watched the service of a young boy-I laughed to myself.
"Oh no, that's right," I whispered to myself. He's not a boy anymore though he was seven years ago. He was a man now. A decent one at that.
It was a strange plight. There I was. A woman who was attending the services and yet not allowed to participate in them.
I didn't think I should have. And the people around him may have heard too much about me already. It's a sad thing, but we must live by these constraints.
Humans take trinkets way too seriously. And they hold grudges. They think that's how they can justify themselves.
My mother had.
But for myself, I was like a woman that held the balance with blinded eyes. I was neither good, but nor was I bad. I just kept living, that's all.
I was some kind of justice...well, to him at least.
Bowing my head, I made the sign of the cross. As the people dispersed, I made my way to his grave. With slightly clenched hands, I held my head up and walked to his grave.
While kneeling, I bowed my head to the grave marker and began to talk with him inside my mind. But all I could come up with was, "Thank you."
Even that stung onto my heart as if someone had pulled a rubberband on it. It had been stretched until it would be just right to snap me with all its might. It made me feel uneasy, as if I couldn't breathe.
I didn't want to cry.
I promised you I wouldn't.
Placing my head on my palm while tilting slightly, I blurted to the silence, "Remember when we first met...?"
It was not long when I ended up on the bad part of Tokyo. In a whirlwind of events, until now, I just have to sort through everything just to recall what had happened to me. Being passed from relative to friends...to only runaway to Tokyo.
At that moment of flashing through my life inside my head while smiling at everyone around me, it just happened that I was called to be a hostess for someone. A new customer, they had said to me.
I laughed and made my way to the front. Someone new. Someone else to interact with.
Smile, Karen, smile.
But when I sat in the booth with this twenty-three-year-old, he just wanted me to talk to him. He drank with me, but he would never touch me. And we ended up doing that all night.
After that, he came every week. I actually looked forward to him coming because it meant that I would talk to someone intelligently...I wouldn't go so far as to insult any other customers, but I had to say, he had class.
It was true, though. He did. He was the youngest manager of his company and had made a name for himself somewhere.
But to me, no matter what he was, he would always be my "Miki". It was a good nickname for him. It fit for him being stuck between being an adult and a child at the same time.
One day, I just casually asked, "Why do you come here, Miki?" Until now, I didn't know why he came to this part of Tokyo that everyone wished didn't exist. It wasn't until he had told me his true reason did I truly understand.
"Weird as it may be, there's no one to talk to," he answered while smoking a cigarette. I was someone that didn't want anything from him. And so, he instead had found me to cover that gap of connecting to someone without strings.
It didn't bother me though. He treated me like a human being too.
I wasn't a toy.
Not something that you touch when and where you wanted...
Someone wouldn't forget me if I died...
finally, I thought I had found someone who would care if I died...
After seven months...
Stubbornly, he had brought me to his private suite inside some famous hotel. He wouldn't have me in any other place but his own.
I don't think I could remember ever being kissed or caressed the way he had. Then again, his body was warm...his heart was where it should have been...
But then, as he laid next to me, he whispered, "So how would you like it here?"
"Huh?" I blinked my eyes as I stared blurry-eyed at the window before me while he grabbed my waist.
Again, he whispered to my ear, "I asked you if you liked it here."
"Yes, it's a nice place."
"No, Karen." He sighed knowing that I was intentionally avoiding the subject. "Do you want to live here with me?"
I became incredibly quiet at that moment.
I didn't know what to say. I didn't even know what to think.
To live with Miki...
"I'll pay for your fee," he said. "You won't have to work there anymore."
I wanted to cry.
At the first moment I had met Miki, I had a feeling that he would tell me this. I knew Miki wouldn't lie to me or do anything bad. He was as good as his word.
Even since that first moment...His eyes.
I think that's what gave it all away.
Then, all these thoughts came into my mind: But what could I give him? He shouldn't be with someone of my profession. He shouldn't be with me. And he had never fallen in love before... What could he possibly know about life from my end of the scale...?
I didn't know how to articulate it, but my silence became an unspoken answer.
The answers were too obvious. The nervousness, too thick. I could have poked my finger at all the problems this posed...
...and I could see it crumble within my hands.
But I squeezed his hands and kissed them. I wanted to be with him so much.
He would let me live another life. One with a real family. One where I could love my child...
...even...
even if they had a power.
Then, that's when my heart beat faster than it had ever had. I almost forgot that in my reveries, I would be destined to die in the end.
I would have to leave him for I would cause him pain with anything associated to my power...
"I want to..." I shook my head. "...but I can't."
It was then that I abruptly got up from the bathroom to dress in the bathroom as I began to cry.
Running out the door with much protest from Miki, I ran down the staircase with tears streaming down my face.
Spirals. Everything was going in spirals downward...
Then...
he grabbed my waist and I stood there on the stairwell as cold as ice. Holding me firmly, he said, "I understand everything that gets in the way...but why, Karen?"
"It's best that you don't know." I looked down to the floor trying not to waver, cry, or fall at my weaknesses.
He sighed and shook his head. He turned me around and put his hands on my cheeks. Looking into those deep brown eyes, he said, "You don't recognize me, do you, Karen?"
Again, he was surprising me.
"What? What are you talking about?" I looked at him in confusion. "I..."
His warm hands felt like they would melt onto my shoulders...
"I've been looking for you all these years?" He then took off his glasses and brought out a picture from his wallet. It was well worn, but it was of a girl on the church steps...
...with a white dress...
...and a smile on her face...
"Myself." I barely mumbled.
That was me.
I looked at him. "Where did you find this?"
It was a picture before my mother had called me a demon that no one would cry for...
So, from that day on, I refused to cry, especially for myself.
"You gave it to me a long time ago, remember...Kat-chan?" He then leaned closer to me. "You left suddenly and no one told me...and I looked for you for a long time. And then, I see you there, sitting in a bar..."
"All grown up. With eyes that had been scarred." He looked at me even deeper. "And the smile had changed."
Then, he hugged me. "Don't leave me now. Don't ignore me."
Holding me even tighter, I felt his breathe on my neck. "I saw that day. From the church door before your mother came..." Shaking me, he firmly said in desparation, "I don't care if you use can fire! And I don't care where you've been! You don't have to tell me anything! Just...just as long as you are willing to come back to me, Karen."
I didn't ask how, when, or why...
It was then that I hugged him back and remembered that child that had had a crush on me before he knew what a crush was.
And all the tears I had built a container for gushed out like blood dripping to the floor when you don't treat a wound.
But no matter what we did...it never worked out. Everything was against us, let's just say.
People...things...religion...you could list them all and we'd check them on some invisible list.
In the end, even though he had been forced to marry, it wasn't without telling me either. But I pushed him to do that so he could be happy.
I wanted him to be happy.
I wanted him to smile the way he had wanted me to smile.
"Promise me that no matter what, you'll always be the same," he had whispered as he left me that night.
I somehow didn't want him to go. There was something wrong with the whole atmosphere.
Now, there was MY Miki. Buried in the earth.
Instead of a wedding, it was a funeral that everyone attended. He had gotten into a car accident when the rain thundered to the ground relentlessly...
I got up and smiled. "Always smile," he had said to me. "I don't care what you do, but smile the same like before."
No matter what...
When those guests walked away and I had passed them to get to the grave, I heard them whisper, "Until the end, he was calling a girl's name...Karen. Tell Karen..."
When I opened my eyes, I noticed a piece of paper taped to the side of the marker saying, "Never give up. You'll find what you're looking for too."
Smiling, I patted the grave marker. "I promise I won't."
As I got up and did the sign of the cross, I looked up to the sky and closed my umbrella.
I didn't care if I got wet anymore.
The rain would cry with me today.
And that's when I began to sing a song by Megami Nemutteiruno called "Never Told You",
"At last I had found you,
but you're gone in an instant.
Lost in the sea of many,
I tried to reach out
Only to be cut down.
And you were taken away.
What I carry is a gift,
A gift full of passion and fire,
I hope you won't forget me.
I never forgot you.
In the morning,
you'll forget me,
and you'll run away
as you had come.
You'll go away and
never come back.
But how I can leave from this place?
I don't want to let you go
but I can't hold on,
slipping, our hands are slipping,
your grasps is weakening.
Gone.
(Caught in the heavy air,
I found a tear from me to you,
passed by the icicles in the air
falling to the ground
always to be forgotten.)
At last I had found you,
but you're gone in an instant.
Lost in the sea of many,
I tried to reach out
Only to be cut down.
And you were taken away.
As you died in my arms,
you whispered to me,
'Despite everything I've done...
until now...
You still love me...'
And I cried with my whispers
taken into the wind around us.
I never got to tell you.
I never got to tell you."
Like everything else, deep inside of me, I wasn't ready. I was never ready for what was to come except to just accept it with a smile.
Then, as soon as I entered my room, the door closed behind me and I placed my hands on my face with wide eyes. Unable to hold it in, I stood there in the darkness.
It had hit me finally with full force and I sobbed silently to myself.
"I never got to tell you," I cried and broke my promise. "Not even once..."
That's what I wanted to say all along...
--
Author's note: ;_;
Deep Inside of You
by Miyamoto Yui
Chapter 4 - Never Told You.
"Despite everything I've done...until now...You still love me..." a radio played in the air as a car passed by.
That was the trigger, I think.
By now, I knew life wasn't full of coincidences. They were just full of incidents that made them seem so.
Smiling to myself, I started to look down to the ground while I bit on my fingernails swaying a bit from where I stood. As the sprinkling rain patted on the soft earth of this early morning, a tear finally fell down my cheek as I blew into my handkerchief. But, despite it all, I was keeping up the smile that I had learned to plaster upon my crying mask.
Makeup did wonders, that I knew. Actresses used them all the time. I knew I did...
I did it all the time.
From far away, I had watched the service of a young boy-I laughed to myself.
"Oh no, that's right," I whispered to myself. He's not a boy anymore though he was seven years ago. He was a man now. A decent one at that.
It was a strange plight. There I was. A woman who was attending the services and yet not allowed to participate in them.
I didn't think I should have. And the people around him may have heard too much about me already. It's a sad thing, but we must live by these constraints.
Humans take trinkets way too seriously. And they hold grudges. They think that's how they can justify themselves.
My mother had.
But for myself, I was like a woman that held the balance with blinded eyes. I was neither good, but nor was I bad. I just kept living, that's all.
I was some kind of justice...well, to him at least.
Bowing my head, I made the sign of the cross. As the people dispersed, I made my way to his grave. With slightly clenched hands, I held my head up and walked to his grave.
While kneeling, I bowed my head to the grave marker and began to talk with him inside my mind. But all I could come up with was, "Thank you."
Even that stung onto my heart as if someone had pulled a rubberband on it. It had been stretched until it would be just right to snap me with all its might. It made me feel uneasy, as if I couldn't breathe.
I didn't want to cry.
I promised you I wouldn't.
Placing my head on my palm while tilting slightly, I blurted to the silence, "Remember when we first met...?"
It was not long when I ended up on the bad part of Tokyo. In a whirlwind of events, until now, I just have to sort through everything just to recall what had happened to me. Being passed from relative to friends...to only runaway to Tokyo.
At that moment of flashing through my life inside my head while smiling at everyone around me, it just happened that I was called to be a hostess for someone. A new customer, they had said to me.
I laughed and made my way to the front. Someone new. Someone else to interact with.
Smile, Karen, smile.
But when I sat in the booth with this twenty-three-year-old, he just wanted me to talk to him. He drank with me, but he would never touch me. And we ended up doing that all night.
After that, he came every week. I actually looked forward to him coming because it meant that I would talk to someone intelligently...I wouldn't go so far as to insult any other customers, but I had to say, he had class.
It was true, though. He did. He was the youngest manager of his company and had made a name for himself somewhere.
But to me, no matter what he was, he would always be my "Miki". It was a good nickname for him. It fit for him being stuck between being an adult and a child at the same time.
One day, I just casually asked, "Why do you come here, Miki?" Until now, I didn't know why he came to this part of Tokyo that everyone wished didn't exist. It wasn't until he had told me his true reason did I truly understand.
"Weird as it may be, there's no one to talk to," he answered while smoking a cigarette. I was someone that didn't want anything from him. And so, he instead had found me to cover that gap of connecting to someone without strings.
It didn't bother me though. He treated me like a human being too.
I wasn't a toy.
Not something that you touch when and where you wanted...
Someone wouldn't forget me if I died...
finally, I thought I had found someone who would care if I died...
After seven months...
Stubbornly, he had brought me to his private suite inside some famous hotel. He wouldn't have me in any other place but his own.
I don't think I could remember ever being kissed or caressed the way he had. Then again, his body was warm...his heart was where it should have been...
But then, as he laid next to me, he whispered, "So how would you like it here?"
"Huh?" I blinked my eyes as I stared blurry-eyed at the window before me while he grabbed my waist.
Again, he whispered to my ear, "I asked you if you liked it here."
"Yes, it's a nice place."
"No, Karen." He sighed knowing that I was intentionally avoiding the subject. "Do you want to live here with me?"
I became incredibly quiet at that moment.
I didn't know what to say. I didn't even know what to think.
To live with Miki...
"I'll pay for your fee," he said. "You won't have to work there anymore."
I wanted to cry.
At the first moment I had met Miki, I had a feeling that he would tell me this. I knew Miki wouldn't lie to me or do anything bad. He was as good as his word.
Even since that first moment...His eyes.
I think that's what gave it all away.
Then, all these thoughts came into my mind: But what could I give him? He shouldn't be with someone of my profession. He shouldn't be with me. And he had never fallen in love before... What could he possibly know about life from my end of the scale...?
I didn't know how to articulate it, but my silence became an unspoken answer.
The answers were too obvious. The nervousness, too thick. I could have poked my finger at all the problems this posed...
...and I could see it crumble within my hands.
But I squeezed his hands and kissed them. I wanted to be with him so much.
He would let me live another life. One with a real family. One where I could love my child...
...even...
even if they had a power.
Then, that's when my heart beat faster than it had ever had. I almost forgot that in my reveries, I would be destined to die in the end.
I would have to leave him for I would cause him pain with anything associated to my power...
"I want to..." I shook my head. "...but I can't."
It was then that I abruptly got up from the bathroom to dress in the bathroom as I began to cry.
Running out the door with much protest from Miki, I ran down the staircase with tears streaming down my face.
Spirals. Everything was going in spirals downward...
Then...
he grabbed my waist and I stood there on the stairwell as cold as ice. Holding me firmly, he said, "I understand everything that gets in the way...but why, Karen?"
"It's best that you don't know." I looked down to the floor trying not to waver, cry, or fall at my weaknesses.
He sighed and shook his head. He turned me around and put his hands on my cheeks. Looking into those deep brown eyes, he said, "You don't recognize me, do you, Karen?"
Again, he was surprising me.
"What? What are you talking about?" I looked at him in confusion. "I..."
His warm hands felt like they would melt onto my shoulders...
"I've been looking for you all these years?" He then took off his glasses and brought out a picture from his wallet. It was well worn, but it was of a girl on the church steps...
...with a white dress...
...and a smile on her face...
"Myself." I barely mumbled.
That was me.
I looked at him. "Where did you find this?"
It was a picture before my mother had called me a demon that no one would cry for...
So, from that day on, I refused to cry, especially for myself.
"You gave it to me a long time ago, remember...Kat-chan?" He then leaned closer to me. "You left suddenly and no one told me...and I looked for you for a long time. And then, I see you there, sitting in a bar..."
"All grown up. With eyes that had been scarred." He looked at me even deeper. "And the smile had changed."
Then, he hugged me. "Don't leave me now. Don't ignore me."
Holding me even tighter, I felt his breathe on my neck. "I saw that day. From the church door before your mother came..." Shaking me, he firmly said in desparation, "I don't care if you use can fire! And I don't care where you've been! You don't have to tell me anything! Just...just as long as you are willing to come back to me, Karen."
I didn't ask how, when, or why...
It was then that I hugged him back and remembered that child that had had a crush on me before he knew what a crush was.
And all the tears I had built a container for gushed out like blood dripping to the floor when you don't treat a wound.
But no matter what we did...it never worked out. Everything was against us, let's just say.
People...things...religion...you could list them all and we'd check them on some invisible list.
In the end, even though he had been forced to marry, it wasn't without telling me either. But I pushed him to do that so he could be happy.
I wanted him to be happy.
I wanted him to smile the way he had wanted me to smile.
"Promise me that no matter what, you'll always be the same," he had whispered as he left me that night.
I somehow didn't want him to go. There was something wrong with the whole atmosphere.
Now, there was MY Miki. Buried in the earth.
Instead of a wedding, it was a funeral that everyone attended. He had gotten into a car accident when the rain thundered to the ground relentlessly...
I got up and smiled. "Always smile," he had said to me. "I don't care what you do, but smile the same like before."
No matter what...
When those guests walked away and I had passed them to get to the grave, I heard them whisper, "Until the end, he was calling a girl's name...Karen. Tell Karen..."
When I opened my eyes, I noticed a piece of paper taped to the side of the marker saying, "Never give up. You'll find what you're looking for too."
Smiling, I patted the grave marker. "I promise I won't."
As I got up and did the sign of the cross, I looked up to the sky and closed my umbrella.
I didn't care if I got wet anymore.
The rain would cry with me today.
And that's when I began to sing a song by Megami Nemutteiruno called "Never Told You",
"At last I had found you,
but you're gone in an instant.
Lost in the sea of many,
I tried to reach out
Only to be cut down.
And you were taken away.
What I carry is a gift,
A gift full of passion and fire,
I hope you won't forget me.
I never forgot you.
In the morning,
you'll forget me,
and you'll run away
as you had come.
You'll go away and
never come back.
But how I can leave from this place?
I don't want to let you go
but I can't hold on,
slipping, our hands are slipping,
your grasps is weakening.
Gone.
(Caught in the heavy air,
I found a tear from me to you,
passed by the icicles in the air
falling to the ground
always to be forgotten.)
At last I had found you,
but you're gone in an instant.
Lost in the sea of many,
I tried to reach out
Only to be cut down.
And you were taken away.
As you died in my arms,
you whispered to me,
'Despite everything I've done...
until now...
You still love me...'
And I cried with my whispers
taken into the wind around us.
I never got to tell you.
I never got to tell you."
Like everything else, deep inside of me, I wasn't ready. I was never ready for what was to come except to just accept it with a smile.
Then, as soon as I entered my room, the door closed behind me and I placed my hands on my face with wide eyes. Unable to hold it in, I stood there in the darkness.
It had hit me finally with full force and I sobbed silently to myself.
"I never got to tell you," I cried and broke my promise. "Not even once..."
That's what I wanted to say all along...
--
Author's note: ;_;