zizi's note: should I write a note in my la-la mood? ok, I will. um, this
is mamo-chan's
view of the 2nd chapter and his thoughts about how he perceives usagi. I
don't know
if I'll make more chapters like this but I thought it would clarify his
intentions
and his reasons for having the locket. I mean, confusing readers too long
is a sin
to a writer and I'm not that mean. Babbling should also be a sin so I stop
now.
DISCLAIMERS here....
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^ NVR ment 2 B mun Chapter 3: Through Mamoru's eyes PG 13
I met him a long time ago at a kid's birthday party. My parents were getting a divorce and at six years of age, I wasn't a very happy child so I refused to go. I was forced into it anyways, having to face hundreds of little brats my age, running and screaming about in an infinite flow of energy, like all six year olds do. But I wasn't like them and neither was my older cousin, Diamond.
We grew up together. Went to the same school together. Hanged out in the same places and poked fun at the same teachers. Even bullied around younger kids. It was fun. Being around him was fun. He was older than me.
But even so, I should have known better.
Diamond....well, Diamond was always a little screwy. He thought weird things, really. He confessed to me once that his real dream was to lead a life of infinite excitement like the interminable energy of six year olds, and to have power, to be his own boss. He started wearing fake diamonds too. Encrusted it onto all his belongings, like his backpack, cellphone, clothes. He's weird that way and his a good guy but he shouldn't have done it. Gotten into that gang business or whatever mess he got into. *I* shouldn't have gotten into that either. I always end up going along with his bizarre antics and crazy ideas but...
He's killed his boss.
He was a senior in high school. I was a freshman. And yet I was there for him like a faithful little brother would. I was there to clean up with him and watch him take his seat in power in that 'gang'. He offered me a piece of it, a piece of his beautiful 'cake', and unable to resist his offer, I took the smallest morsel only to taste. How did I know that it condemned me into a life without sleep? A life similar to his?
Shortly afterwards, he inherited his parents' jewelry company after they had passed away in a mysterious accident and he expanded and built it, brought fresh ideas and made them real.
Excitement, he said. What about the excitement?
So he brings in illegal guns and store it in his warehouses. He uses his gang to sell them and keep his power in another world: the world of night. I've never seen the gang before, its real identity concealed from my 'innocent' eyes. I was worried about it but Diamond promised me that he got everything under control and I could trust him, as he trusts me. We're cousins for crying out loud. Blood related and everything, grew up like brothers.
Now I laugh at that. I believed they would go away, his strange thoughts, I mean. I was wrong.
Diamond's weird thoughts have only branched out, into a web of incomprehensible thoughts. He looks smooth and calm but he's paranoid, he tells me this. Someone's out to get him, always. Nowadays, another sticky thought formed in his head: there's a crystal, no, a huge diamond crystal as large as his fist, and if you look deep enough, you can see a city of silver buildings or a reflection of Earth. It's called the Imperial Crystal.
It might not even exist, I said.
Oh, but it does, he tells me. I see it in my dreams sometimes, the city of silver as beautiful as the full moon at night.
I'm worried about him. I truly am. He's gone crazy and I didn't do anything to prevent it. I should have stopped it when I had the chance. I should have stopped him before he pulled the trigger that night in his boss's office and told him he was crazy and that he should stop all those weird ideas in his head and return to the Diamond I grew up with. I should have and I didn't.
There's nothing I can do now though. I'm involved in this too, stuck in his web of intricate thoughts and secrets, consumed by his world of night where he is idolized as king, attending to all the little details Diamond cares to miss, obligated to stand by his side because I'm his faithful cousin, and the same blood runs through our veins. But sometimes I wonder if I could watch him off to the side and see him die slowly in a tangle of his own madness.
*^*^*^*/
I was skipping school for the third time this year. Had a meeting with Diamond at nine in the morning 'cause he said he had no other space in his busy schedule. It's been like this alot lately and I hadn't cared to ask why.
Nervous at being seen by someone I knew, I slipped out a pair of sunglasses and put them on. To complete my dark look, I slicked my hair forward to cover my face, looked at the sidewalk to avoid eye contact, and tucked my hands deep into my pockets.
The night before I had slept very little. A dream kept me awake, a beautiful dream, misted with fog and tiny stars, water replacing the firmness of the ground and a crystal as big as my fist floating in front of me. I knew it was Diamond's Imperial crystal the moment my fingers felt the smooth surface of the rock.
Diamond's crazy, I thought. He's getting ideas in your head again.
I bumped into someone, a girl actually with long blonde hair. I had been watching her for some distance, not intentionally, just observing how her contemplative face resembled my own life. Always torn between two sides. What's right and what's not right. What you want and what you must do. And of course, the battle of good and evil.
I stood back up, dusting off my pants and made some dull comment of divided loyalties. She looked at me strangely and didn't answer so I turned on my heels and somehow, I said some other thing that I don't quite remember.
Whatever. She wasn't much to look at anyway.
I continued on my merry way, drifting through the crowd swiftly and even stopping to buy the newspaper. Some yelling behind me made me notice the same blonde haired girl struggling against the world in a big hurry, I suppose, running late to school. Trying to draw into my thoughts again, I ignored her.
I opened the newspapers and looked at today's headlines "Mystery solved: Computer Attack from Unknown Hacker". Diamond said that today's headlines had something to do with what he wanted to discuss with me. That didn't make sense but Diamond never makes much sense anyway. Always talking in riddles, quoting famous dead people, and throwing out a phrase here and there that's completely irrelevant to the topic of discussion.
I sighed. All of this was really taking out of studying for my entrance exams. If anything it would be nice to go to Tokyo University or even to America and study there a bit. Yeah, that would be nice. I'd go see the world after I'm done and be a doctor at a small hospital in some distant town. Meet the girl of my dreams there and maybe even have a family. Just thinking about it made me feel old and weary.
Shouts were coming from behind again. Two or three people knocked down, a fruit basket tossed aside, a kid fell, more screams, more mess. That girl again.
"I thought you had to better things to do," I said when she bumped into me. "Like going to school."
I spotted a coffee shop right then, and I suddenly craved a nice warm cup of coffee.
"Would you like a cup of coffee?" I asked, "Might need it so you won't fall asleep in class. Must have slept late, huh?"
I really didn't care if she did or not, I mean, I didn't even know this girl. Just for courtesy sake, I got her one too and decided that sitting down for a bit wouldn't be such a bad idea and sitting down with company, especially a girl, was always a very good idea.
The girl stared at me with that same contemplative face and a hint of confusion as if she had lost something. I wasn't going to ask; it wasn't my business and in ten minutes, I needed to go meet Diamond. Having to listen to a person's life story was out of the question.
After five minutes, I persuaded the girl to sit down and take the cup of coffee. It was then that I noticed her eyes so clear and bright. Big and as round as the moon. They held so much within them, her life itself was told and I saw pain. Either way, they were beautiful, like the beauty of a--
I shook my head.This girl was nothing but a school girl, scrawny and short,legs no better than a chair's, and a weird kiddish hairstyle: two pony tails with long hair that reached past her ankles. She had an angel face, that's for sure, and her eyes were captivating and a beauty to look at. Besides that, she was not much else to see.
She didn't speak at all during the five minutes that we were there but she did have her mouth opening and closing like she had lost her voice and needed to tell me something. Nothing came out though.
The town clock rung; my sign to leave. I got up, still watching this angel face with crystal eyes.
"It was nice to see you again and wish to see you more often around here," I said, at first not aware that I had come inches from her lips. I must have kissed her then because I remember the smell of her perfume close to me and the sweet taste of coffee.
It didn't matter. She was a school girl, probably still in junior high, and that kiss was maybe her first, throwing her into confusion and then anger but what did I care? I was no one to her and she was no one to me. She didn't even talk the entire time we were sitting there.
I patted her head and ushered her away. It was strange that now, as I try to recall it, I could hardly remember anything I said or what she said to me and that if I did indeed kiss her, I didn't live any moment of it, only a vague sense of it. How, then, did I found my meeting with this stranger nothing out of the ordinary and why didn't I find my lapses in memory strange or how come I never noticed this thing in my pocket?
Wait. This wasn't here before.
I stopped a block away from the arcade pulling out a strange pink locket from the inside of my tuxedo jacket. It reminded me of something (even though I wasn't quite sure what) so I took a liking to it from the start tossing it up and down in the air. By the time I got to the arcade, the locket had become a part of me like my hackysack in my junior high years. I didn't wonder where it came from or how it sneaked its way into my pocket. It was just there. One way or another, I would remember where I found it from and what it meant eventually.
Right at nine, Diamond came in, sat down and ordered coffee. Smiling, he leaned back into his chair and pulled out today's newspapers along with four others. "Read them all?"
I nodded.
"Good. How have you been doing?" he asked. "Is the savings for the car going pretty well? I hope I paid you enough to help out a bit. Slick car. Makes me wanna buy one too. You think I would be attack by monsters if I rode a car like that?"
I nodded again, ignoring the starnge comment.
"How's school? Actually studying for those exams?"
"Yeah, well, I wanna get into med school--you know that--and I definitely don't wanna be a ronin* next year. Be a waste of my time."
Diamond smiled again. "I can get you in with no problem. Even send you to America. How about it?"
It annoyed me sometimes how Diamond wanted to get involved in my life. I told him stuff, but then he would try to act as a parent and pay everything for me, like a sort of obligation on his part. Today was no different.
"You don't have to do that. I can take care of myself just fine."
Diamond sipped his coffee, showing off his new diamonds embedded on his left sleeve. "If you say so. Remember when we used to hang out here? Ah, those days were golden. Too bad cameras watch you now. People always trying to get at you and crush you bit by bit. Strange, huh? I sorta do the same now."
"Well, aren't you going to tell me?"
"Ah, yeah, that." Diamond set the newspapers in front of me with another secretive smile. "You see this? I started up with a new branch in the Zlon business!"
"What do you mean?"
I heard a clatter behind me and saw a girl about Diamond's age, rise up."You WHAT?" the girl cried in anger. Another girl covered her face with a black school bag, cowering at the sight of the older girl. She sort of reminded me of the girl from this morning.
"She's here," Diamond whispered to me. "That's the girl I've been talking about."
Diamond liked confusing me before getting to the point so I remained silent as he called out the girl hiding behind the school bag.
"Usagi, I didn't know you came here," Diamond said. "I thought you had school."
Usagi, huh? A very likely name for her, yes.
"Ah, well, school was out early..."
Friends of hers walked in then, greeted her and introduce themselves to us. Diamond was enjoying himself however he seemed anxious at the same time. He excused us after a few minutes and we walked out with me tossing the locket into the air. Something must have bothered him about *something* but today wasn't a good day to ask. All that would come out of him is bits and phrases what he's thinking.
"Well," Diamond said. "Like I was saying, that girl's my new secretary. Part time of course but you know how I need someone in at night. My business is an all-nighter too so I had to get extra help. She's pretty good actually. Better than Emerald. Don't tell her I told you that."
I was beginning to despise Diamond's games but I listened carefully finally piecing the jigsaw puzzle of his thoughts.
"Now, Zlon gets onto a more personal level with its competitors. Know how? Computers."
"You mean--"
"--Yeah, I mean that. I'm gonna need you around a lot more often. There's no one I trust more than you and I'll pay you, if that's what you want."
"What for?"
"For that crystal, of course. I heard it's here in Japan. Maybe even in Tokyo."
"Diamond, what is the real reason for wanting that crystal? What importance does it have?"
Diamond smiled again. He was in a pretty good mood today. "Because I want to see her, that's all. And maybe I can see the real moon and all of its wonders. I want something different from this life of mine."
"But you have everything." "I don't want 'everything'. I want something more. Something this life can't give me."
His limousine was around the corner, and he left. Most of the stuff he said didn't make sense and it was getting more difficult each day to understand what he meant. I didn't want to admit that I was worried or that there was something going on that I wasn't aware of. His life bothered me and I found that my own way of living bugged me too.
Diamond, you're losing it, I thought. And somehow, I'm in this too.
*^*^*^*^/
ronin* a student preparing for entrance exams to get into the university of their choice in Japan. If the student fails, the following year after they graduate from school, they'll continue to be ronin until they finally pass the exam.
that's it for now. Next chapter a surprise. Don't forget to review or sent emails at g_chakra21@yahoo.com.
zizi.
DISCLAIMERS here....
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^ NVR ment 2 B mun Chapter 3: Through Mamoru's eyes PG 13
I met him a long time ago at a kid's birthday party. My parents were getting a divorce and at six years of age, I wasn't a very happy child so I refused to go. I was forced into it anyways, having to face hundreds of little brats my age, running and screaming about in an infinite flow of energy, like all six year olds do. But I wasn't like them and neither was my older cousin, Diamond.
We grew up together. Went to the same school together. Hanged out in the same places and poked fun at the same teachers. Even bullied around younger kids. It was fun. Being around him was fun. He was older than me.
But even so, I should have known better.
Diamond....well, Diamond was always a little screwy. He thought weird things, really. He confessed to me once that his real dream was to lead a life of infinite excitement like the interminable energy of six year olds, and to have power, to be his own boss. He started wearing fake diamonds too. Encrusted it onto all his belongings, like his backpack, cellphone, clothes. He's weird that way and his a good guy but he shouldn't have done it. Gotten into that gang business or whatever mess he got into. *I* shouldn't have gotten into that either. I always end up going along with his bizarre antics and crazy ideas but...
He's killed his boss.
He was a senior in high school. I was a freshman. And yet I was there for him like a faithful little brother would. I was there to clean up with him and watch him take his seat in power in that 'gang'. He offered me a piece of it, a piece of his beautiful 'cake', and unable to resist his offer, I took the smallest morsel only to taste. How did I know that it condemned me into a life without sleep? A life similar to his?
Shortly afterwards, he inherited his parents' jewelry company after they had passed away in a mysterious accident and he expanded and built it, brought fresh ideas and made them real.
Excitement, he said. What about the excitement?
So he brings in illegal guns and store it in his warehouses. He uses his gang to sell them and keep his power in another world: the world of night. I've never seen the gang before, its real identity concealed from my 'innocent' eyes. I was worried about it but Diamond promised me that he got everything under control and I could trust him, as he trusts me. We're cousins for crying out loud. Blood related and everything, grew up like brothers.
Now I laugh at that. I believed they would go away, his strange thoughts, I mean. I was wrong.
Diamond's weird thoughts have only branched out, into a web of incomprehensible thoughts. He looks smooth and calm but he's paranoid, he tells me this. Someone's out to get him, always. Nowadays, another sticky thought formed in his head: there's a crystal, no, a huge diamond crystal as large as his fist, and if you look deep enough, you can see a city of silver buildings or a reflection of Earth. It's called the Imperial Crystal.
It might not even exist, I said.
Oh, but it does, he tells me. I see it in my dreams sometimes, the city of silver as beautiful as the full moon at night.
I'm worried about him. I truly am. He's gone crazy and I didn't do anything to prevent it. I should have stopped it when I had the chance. I should have stopped him before he pulled the trigger that night in his boss's office and told him he was crazy and that he should stop all those weird ideas in his head and return to the Diamond I grew up with. I should have and I didn't.
There's nothing I can do now though. I'm involved in this too, stuck in his web of intricate thoughts and secrets, consumed by his world of night where he is idolized as king, attending to all the little details Diamond cares to miss, obligated to stand by his side because I'm his faithful cousin, and the same blood runs through our veins. But sometimes I wonder if I could watch him off to the side and see him die slowly in a tangle of his own madness.
*^*^*^*/
I was skipping school for the third time this year. Had a meeting with Diamond at nine in the morning 'cause he said he had no other space in his busy schedule. It's been like this alot lately and I hadn't cared to ask why.
Nervous at being seen by someone I knew, I slipped out a pair of sunglasses and put them on. To complete my dark look, I slicked my hair forward to cover my face, looked at the sidewalk to avoid eye contact, and tucked my hands deep into my pockets.
The night before I had slept very little. A dream kept me awake, a beautiful dream, misted with fog and tiny stars, water replacing the firmness of the ground and a crystal as big as my fist floating in front of me. I knew it was Diamond's Imperial crystal the moment my fingers felt the smooth surface of the rock.
Diamond's crazy, I thought. He's getting ideas in your head again.
I bumped into someone, a girl actually with long blonde hair. I had been watching her for some distance, not intentionally, just observing how her contemplative face resembled my own life. Always torn between two sides. What's right and what's not right. What you want and what you must do. And of course, the battle of good and evil.
I stood back up, dusting off my pants and made some dull comment of divided loyalties. She looked at me strangely and didn't answer so I turned on my heels and somehow, I said some other thing that I don't quite remember.
Whatever. She wasn't much to look at anyway.
I continued on my merry way, drifting through the crowd swiftly and even stopping to buy the newspaper. Some yelling behind me made me notice the same blonde haired girl struggling against the world in a big hurry, I suppose, running late to school. Trying to draw into my thoughts again, I ignored her.
I opened the newspapers and looked at today's headlines "Mystery solved: Computer Attack from Unknown Hacker". Diamond said that today's headlines had something to do with what he wanted to discuss with me. That didn't make sense but Diamond never makes much sense anyway. Always talking in riddles, quoting famous dead people, and throwing out a phrase here and there that's completely irrelevant to the topic of discussion.
I sighed. All of this was really taking out of studying for my entrance exams. If anything it would be nice to go to Tokyo University or even to America and study there a bit. Yeah, that would be nice. I'd go see the world after I'm done and be a doctor at a small hospital in some distant town. Meet the girl of my dreams there and maybe even have a family. Just thinking about it made me feel old and weary.
Shouts were coming from behind again. Two or three people knocked down, a fruit basket tossed aside, a kid fell, more screams, more mess. That girl again.
"I thought you had to better things to do," I said when she bumped into me. "Like going to school."
I spotted a coffee shop right then, and I suddenly craved a nice warm cup of coffee.
"Would you like a cup of coffee?" I asked, "Might need it so you won't fall asleep in class. Must have slept late, huh?"
I really didn't care if she did or not, I mean, I didn't even know this girl. Just for courtesy sake, I got her one too and decided that sitting down for a bit wouldn't be such a bad idea and sitting down with company, especially a girl, was always a very good idea.
The girl stared at me with that same contemplative face and a hint of confusion as if she had lost something. I wasn't going to ask; it wasn't my business and in ten minutes, I needed to go meet Diamond. Having to listen to a person's life story was out of the question.
After five minutes, I persuaded the girl to sit down and take the cup of coffee. It was then that I noticed her eyes so clear and bright. Big and as round as the moon. They held so much within them, her life itself was told and I saw pain. Either way, they were beautiful, like the beauty of a--
I shook my head.This girl was nothing but a school girl, scrawny and short,legs no better than a chair's, and a weird kiddish hairstyle: two pony tails with long hair that reached past her ankles. She had an angel face, that's for sure, and her eyes were captivating and a beauty to look at. Besides that, she was not much else to see.
She didn't speak at all during the five minutes that we were there but she did have her mouth opening and closing like she had lost her voice and needed to tell me something. Nothing came out though.
The town clock rung; my sign to leave. I got up, still watching this angel face with crystal eyes.
"It was nice to see you again and wish to see you more often around here," I said, at first not aware that I had come inches from her lips. I must have kissed her then because I remember the smell of her perfume close to me and the sweet taste of coffee.
It didn't matter. She was a school girl, probably still in junior high, and that kiss was maybe her first, throwing her into confusion and then anger but what did I care? I was no one to her and she was no one to me. She didn't even talk the entire time we were sitting there.
I patted her head and ushered her away. It was strange that now, as I try to recall it, I could hardly remember anything I said or what she said to me and that if I did indeed kiss her, I didn't live any moment of it, only a vague sense of it. How, then, did I found my meeting with this stranger nothing out of the ordinary and why didn't I find my lapses in memory strange or how come I never noticed this thing in my pocket?
Wait. This wasn't here before.
I stopped a block away from the arcade pulling out a strange pink locket from the inside of my tuxedo jacket. It reminded me of something (even though I wasn't quite sure what) so I took a liking to it from the start tossing it up and down in the air. By the time I got to the arcade, the locket had become a part of me like my hackysack in my junior high years. I didn't wonder where it came from or how it sneaked its way into my pocket. It was just there. One way or another, I would remember where I found it from and what it meant eventually.
Right at nine, Diamond came in, sat down and ordered coffee. Smiling, he leaned back into his chair and pulled out today's newspapers along with four others. "Read them all?"
I nodded.
"Good. How have you been doing?" he asked. "Is the savings for the car going pretty well? I hope I paid you enough to help out a bit. Slick car. Makes me wanna buy one too. You think I would be attack by monsters if I rode a car like that?"
I nodded again, ignoring the starnge comment.
"How's school? Actually studying for those exams?"
"Yeah, well, I wanna get into med school--you know that--and I definitely don't wanna be a ronin* next year. Be a waste of my time."
Diamond smiled again. "I can get you in with no problem. Even send you to America. How about it?"
It annoyed me sometimes how Diamond wanted to get involved in my life. I told him stuff, but then he would try to act as a parent and pay everything for me, like a sort of obligation on his part. Today was no different.
"You don't have to do that. I can take care of myself just fine."
Diamond sipped his coffee, showing off his new diamonds embedded on his left sleeve. "If you say so. Remember when we used to hang out here? Ah, those days were golden. Too bad cameras watch you now. People always trying to get at you and crush you bit by bit. Strange, huh? I sorta do the same now."
"Well, aren't you going to tell me?"
"Ah, yeah, that." Diamond set the newspapers in front of me with another secretive smile. "You see this? I started up with a new branch in the Zlon business!"
"What do you mean?"
I heard a clatter behind me and saw a girl about Diamond's age, rise up."You WHAT?" the girl cried in anger. Another girl covered her face with a black school bag, cowering at the sight of the older girl. She sort of reminded me of the girl from this morning.
"She's here," Diamond whispered to me. "That's the girl I've been talking about."
Diamond liked confusing me before getting to the point so I remained silent as he called out the girl hiding behind the school bag.
"Usagi, I didn't know you came here," Diamond said. "I thought you had school."
Usagi, huh? A very likely name for her, yes.
"Ah, well, school was out early..."
Friends of hers walked in then, greeted her and introduce themselves to us. Diamond was enjoying himself however he seemed anxious at the same time. He excused us after a few minutes and we walked out with me tossing the locket into the air. Something must have bothered him about *something* but today wasn't a good day to ask. All that would come out of him is bits and phrases what he's thinking.
"Well," Diamond said. "Like I was saying, that girl's my new secretary. Part time of course but you know how I need someone in at night. My business is an all-nighter too so I had to get extra help. She's pretty good actually. Better than Emerald. Don't tell her I told you that."
I was beginning to despise Diamond's games but I listened carefully finally piecing the jigsaw puzzle of his thoughts.
"Now, Zlon gets onto a more personal level with its competitors. Know how? Computers."
"You mean--"
"--Yeah, I mean that. I'm gonna need you around a lot more often. There's no one I trust more than you and I'll pay you, if that's what you want."
"What for?"
"For that crystal, of course. I heard it's here in Japan. Maybe even in Tokyo."
"Diamond, what is the real reason for wanting that crystal? What importance does it have?"
Diamond smiled again. He was in a pretty good mood today. "Because I want to see her, that's all. And maybe I can see the real moon and all of its wonders. I want something different from this life of mine."
"But you have everything." "I don't want 'everything'. I want something more. Something this life can't give me."
His limousine was around the corner, and he left. Most of the stuff he said didn't make sense and it was getting more difficult each day to understand what he meant. I didn't want to admit that I was worried or that there was something going on that I wasn't aware of. His life bothered me and I found that my own way of living bugged me too.
Diamond, you're losing it, I thought. And somehow, I'm in this too.
*^*^*^*^/
ronin* a student preparing for entrance exams to get into the university of their choice in Japan. If the student fails, the following year after they graduate from school, they'll continue to be ronin until they finally pass the exam.
that's it for now. Next chapter a surprise. Don't forget to review or sent emails at g_chakra21@yahoo.com.
zizi.