Fandom: X / Tokyo Babylon
Title: Rikoteki na yume.
Pairing: Seishirou + Subaru
Rating: PG
Description: The makings of a Sakurazukamori... (made for Seishirou's birthday.)
Disclaimer: Yui doesn't own anything from Tokyo Babylon to Soseki-sensei's works to Koi da Panikku to Tanizaki-sensei's works. I only own my original character Kurosawa Ian and the [rather not-so-good] translation below.
"Uketomete hoshii no yo Kiss wo
Yume no naka de ii
Dakishimete hoshii no ni watashi...
Uketomete agetai no Kiss wo
Ai ga afuredasu
Dakishimete agetakute watashi
Motto yasashiku suru"
/Wanting to reach out for a Kiss...
It's okay if only in a dream.
Even though, I want to hold you in my arms...
And reaching out, wanting to kiss you
Love overflows
Holding the me I wanted to give
should be even more gentle./
Rikoteki na yume. (Selfish dream.)
By miyamoto yui
Chapter 2 - ningen dake. (only human.)
The sixteen-year-old boy, like all high school students, had a project to do so he was going to the library. He wanted to do some kind of term paper just to impress everyone because that was just how he was. It was a school requirement, but he sure as hell didn't know what to do.
Who cared if he wrote a research paper on the set of femme fatales of Tanizaki-sensei? That was probably the only topic that gave him any interest.
He continued to look at the stacks for a set of books to read. He had already read more than half of the works, but he couldn't seem to find one that fascinated him. Not that that was an easy task in itself, for he never held his attention on any one person or thing for too long.
And it wasn't because he was sixteen.
"Oh my..." someone gasped. Probably she didn't even know she had commented aloud, but it broke Seishirou's concentration on the book "Some Prefer Nettles".
As he was looking through the stacks of literature books, there was a teacher sitting on the ground with a book in her hands. Like a teenager, she put her knees together as if squishing herself into a ball, then read her book with no care for the rest of the world.
"Good afternoon, Kurosawa-sensei."
Blinking at the sound of her name, she lifted her head and closed her eyes, smiling at him. "Oh, hello, Sakurazuka-kun."
Funny. They weren't supposed to know one another...
He smiled as he nodded his head. Holding his hand out to pull a book, he looked down at the text before his teacher. "Isn't that 'Naomi' by Tanizaki-sensei?"
Looking at him curiously, she was surprised. "Why yes..."
"Are you enjoying the book, Sensei?" he asked as he pulled the book he needed from the shelf.
Ah, what an apple-polisher!
She nodded her head. "It's very interesting."
Trying to be friendly, he attempted to make conversation with her. "I like the plot twist."
"Which one?" Kurosawa-sensei looked at him curiously.
"Naomi isn't what her husband thought she was."
"Why should that interest you, Sakurazuka-kun?" She got up and dusted off her skirt. Tilting her head with an unreadable smile, she said, "It's not an uncommon thing, is it?"
At that, she pushed up her glasses, nodding her head and leaving with Seishirou raising his eyebrow as he looked on after her. "So the innocent looking teacher isn't so naïve after all..."
With that, he smiled to himself and resumed looking for a Tanizaki book.
He also remembered that particular teacher's face even more.
"Naomi, is it?" he mumbled to himself with a smirk. "I've found my book."
+/+/+/+/+/
Two years later...
She was a wonderful set of picturesque oddities. That was the only way he could describe her.
Her brown eyes were so wide and her glasses made her look even more intelligent.
The long skirt she wore today contrasted with the white poet's shirt she had on. She didn't look out of place, but rather, it was the classroom that suffered from her presence.
As friendly as she was, she always carried something to read. Sometimes it was manga, and sometimes it was a journal article. More often than not, every other book seemed to be Soseki Natsume and Tanizaki Junichirou-sensei's.
When she finally became his homeroom teacher, he didn't have to go spying on her anymore. As much as he hated to admit it, he would actually watch her as he passed by her classroom, at assemblies when she stood up at the front, or from the school roof when she exited the school entrance.
Kurosawa Ian thought it was quite funny for one of her students to have such a crush on her. She never told anyone and that was just fine with her.
The staff dismissed her behavior in class either because she was too much or that she was the way she was. There was no other way to say it.
Seishirou admired that about her. She always pushed the boundaries and she did it so sweetly.
It was the last period of the day and Kurosawa-sensei remained in the classroom. Even though she should have been correcting papers, she was laughing with a doujinshi in her hands.
This shouldn't have been brought to class anyway, but she was the same teacher who winked and let you have five minutes of socializing time. It was called 'English conversation' because you could talk about anything as long as it was said in English.
The administration normally would have gotten upset if it weren't for the fact that she kept the best record for student testing. No one could argue as long as she did her job, right?
One of Japan's mottos: Do your job and you do it right. Without mercy. There's no room for it.
But what happened when you mixed your job and your life, though?
Actually, Seishirou associated this motto with her instead because she was the one who said that while they were discussing something about Mishima Yukio's 'Patriotism'.
Opposite to her energetic nature, however, a cruel being resided also. If you did something that Kurosawa-sensei deemed unfair, you were in for a good lecture that would make your ear fall off.
It all balanced out.
Seishirou loved it even more when she got mad. It was just his perverseness for cruelty that made him so amused and smitten with her. It was like the time that he'd played a joke on someone and she never suspected it was him. Instead, someone else paid for it.
But here she was in front of him as he fixed his belongings. Everyone ran out, but he purposely made himself slow in order to watch Kurosawa-sensei and ask her a question.
She laughed.
And as much as Seishirou was concentrating to ask her a question, some part of him became relaxed because of her laughter. Actually, It almost made him forget what he was going to ask.
It was because she sounded like a little girl being tickled. Seishirou looked up from his desk and smiled at her.
Realizing she was a bit loud, Kurosawa-sensei looked up and saw Seishirou standing in front of her. She blinked at him. "Yes?"
"I wanted to ask you a question, Sensei," Seishirou said as his hands became a bit sweaty.
Why the hell was he acting like this in the first place?
There was something so intimidating about that woman with the beautiful smiling face.
"Yes?" She looked at him and encouraged him to just say what was on his mind.
"Would you mind helping me with my final paper for this class?" He looked at her with the best innocent look that he could. It was damn hard, but he pulled it off.
"Sure, no problem," she answered him. "When do you want to meet? Want to start today?"
"All right," Seishirou said. He cleared his throat as she began to pack her things. He couldn't tell who was older at the rate they were going.
"I'm really thirsty, so let's go to a café to discuss this." Then, she stopped packing and looked at him. "Do you mind? Or is it too dorky to go out with your own teacher? Some people are offended by things like that."
Here was the teacher that seemed so confident in class and pushed the constraints put upon her. And she was asking him if he was uncomfortable? With a hand over his mouth, he couldn't help but chuckle at her.
"What are you laughing about?"
Her manner was so friendly he couldn't help but feel like he had been sucked into a trap.
He had.
And he was so willing a victim for her...
The scary thing was that she didn't even know it either...
They went into a café downtown and she ordered an iced cappuccino while he got a coke. Kurosawa-sensei smiled at him. "It's so great to see some people who still love to read Tanizaki-sensei."
"Why do you say that?" He looked at her while sipping his drink.
"It's because everyone is so into reading junk." She sighed as she looked out the window. "There's no substance anymore."
Seishirou looked at her profile and wondered if her childish face and mannerisms reminded him of his own mother. In a way, yes, but there was something very charming about her.
A very strange charm that even he couldn't understand.
"Anyway," she said as she looked back at him. "Why do you like to read him?"
He looked at her carefully and without discretion, his eyes didn't stray away. "The obsessive nature of each of his characters. Whether it has to do with becoming Western, love, or something else, I like the way he always manages to suck the reader into liking his perversity."
Kurosawa-sensei wasn't at all offended by his directness. Actually, that was the moment that made him so fond to her. She nodded her head. "Such a deep answer for one so young."
"Why do you read his works, Sensei? Don't you get tired of his formula?" Now, it was Seishirou's turn to ask the questions.
She shook her head as she returned his gaze. "Tanizaki-sensei may use the same format, but he always has a different perspective. I love him not only by the way he characterizes obsession but also by the way it drives itself as if it were a separate entity. People are moved by their weaknesses, not their strengths-isn't that strange?"
It was as if she was talking about him rather than the book, but Seishirou couldn't distinguish which was which. She seemed too...too...too sincere.
It was all too passionate.
How could she smile so much from just answering a question?
He had to find out...
He had to figure it out or else it would drive him mad...
And from then on, Seishirou went out with his Sensei to that café to discuss about literature books. Their conversations started out as calm and collected, but gradually, they became heated. They even caused a stir sometimes, and Seishirou wondered how could this woman provoke this much out of him.
Even his own mother never made him feel so much...
"'Kokoro' is about transition. The student wanted answers and the teacher gave them to him," Seishirou answered, feeling as if Kurosawa-sensei was truly probing him for answers that seemed so obvious. It irritated him.
"But how about if you interpret that Sensei's attitude was more of trying to get 'I' from talking to him? All throughout the book, until the end, you see Sensei avoiding 'I'." Kurosawa-sensei looked at him with her wide, brown eyes, trying to find an answer through Seishirou's amber ones.
"Then the student should have taken the hint and left the teacher alone. There wouldn't have been a book, though," he answered. Seishirou couldn't understand why the heck she was so persistent.
It was as if it was a question that could open an answer for both of them...
She shook her head. "You have totally missed what Soseki-sensei is trying to tell you, Sakurazuka-kun! He's trying to tell his audience that people put limitations upon themselves and their worlds. That's why the cycle repeated. The student didn't listen and therefore he's thought never to have transcended from his position in life."
"I can interpret this any way I want!" Seishirou found himself shouting as he got up from the booth, slamming his hand on the table. He was ashamed at his childishness.
"Yes, you can. That's correct, but you're missing one thing, Sakurazuka-kun!" She got up and looked at him defiantly in the eyes. "Why is it called Kokoro? What does your heart tell you this book means, Sakurazuka-kun?! You can give me all the mechanical answers you want, but tell me what you feel!"
At that moment, he gave a deep sigh. With thin lips, he found himself bowing before her and leaving the café as quickly as he could.
But he couldn't get away.
She ran to catch up with him.
He just walked away even quicker.
For the first time in his life, he felt himself trembling with anger and frustration. She had hit an invisible chord within him.
"What does your heart tell you this book means, Sakurazuka-kun?!" her voice repeated inside of his head.
He didn't know.
Then, he stopped walking and they were all alone in a park. It wasn't even well lit from where they stood. Kurosawa-sensei stood a few feet behind him panting.
But that didn't stop her. She walked in front of him and looked into his eyes, hers on fire.
"So passionate..." he thought to himself as he looked down at her. "...how can you be so passionate over a single book? What do you want from me?"
"Why did you run away from me?!" she asked harshly as her wrath began to enwrap both of them.
"..." He didn't answer.
For the first time in his life, he was speechless. He couldn't come up with an answer.
This had hit an area that he didn't know: His own heart.
He was totally blank.
He looked away from her.
Always pushing through people's comfort zones, she reached out for his face to look at her. Letting go, she blinked at him and gave him a concerned look. With a soft voice, as though she was starting to understand him, she said, "You don't have to answer me."
Someone...understand...him?
Was this weakness?
He became more frustrated.
"I just want an honest answer," she told him.
Confused, he replied, "I don't know."
With that answer, Seishirou felt a little helpless. He felt like he was bleeding and she was the one who was killing him.
Smiling at him, she nodded her head as she poked the area around his heart. "That's what you need to find out. Why is there a blank when it comes to your heart, Sakurazuka-kun?"
At that moment, he leaned forward, giving himself to human weakness.
"Such an interesting woman..." he thought to himself.
He kissed her.
She held her breath and took a step back, away from him.
Why didn't it feel wrong?
His mother would have been so mad at him for letting someone else touch his lips...
Kurosawa-sensei gave him a smile. "That was the most honest answer you have given me in all the weeks we've been talking about books."
It was then he understood why he admired her so much and why she scared him, despite her short stature. She was open about her heart.
And with this honesty, people around her were afraid.
Society promoted you to be your own individual, but made you conform to it. Everything was a bunch of convoluted lies painted with bright, promising colors.
But not her.
She knew the difference.
Kurosawa Ian countered it.
It reminded him of his prey...
And in that instant, she turned around with a firm look in her eyes. "Never talk to me again, Sakurazuka-kun."
At that, he heard the tapping of her footsteps as she walked away from him.
He stood there watching her without a word.
Seishirou, in all the years of his life, was afraid of his comfortable numbness decaying because of that woman's touch. A barrier his mother had done so well to build and he had given much effort to preserve it.
+/+/+/+/+/
He kept his promise, but as soon as he graduated high school, the first thing he did was show up at her front step. She'd been expecting him and somehow, he wasn't fazed.
Later, he found out she had slight premonition abilities. To say the least.
"I cannot say that I am pleased to see you, Sakurazuka-kun," Kurosawa-sensei said as she prepared tea for him and herself.
In all the literature classes, he watched her carefully, and she didn't cower. Whatever was outside of that classroom was left outside. They were good at acting like that.
Now, he slightly understood that, while trying to understand himself in the process.
Wanting to hold onto being numb...
...especially since now his mother was gone...
"Why did you come here?" she asked rudely, turning to him.
"When one runs, the other chases. Isn't that what Tanizaki-sensei always teaches?" He got up from his seat and walked over to her. "That is human nature."
She watched him as he came closer to her.
"Guilt can kill you, Soseki-sensei has said," she retorted. "Unless you resolve yourself, you can't expect to move on in life."
"Then let me resolve this..." Seishirou said as he reached out to hold her.
Again, he wanted to kiss her, but she turned her face away.
"You don't mean it." She pushed him away. "Have I taught you nothing this year?"
But her eyes were different today. They were fighting against something other than himself.
"Why are you still afraid of me, Seishirou-kun?"
His eyes slightly opened wide at the sound of his name. At the gentle way she called him.
She clearly looked at him. "You will never learn about anything if you can't get out of your own personal boundaries."
Why was this so hard? Because he was going against everything his mother ever taught him.
Kill anything that stands in your way...
You can't become strong until you've learned to become indifferent...
Humans are weak because they can feel so much. If you control how you feel and your environment, then everything can be used to your advantage.
"That's why we kill people in the heart, Seishirou-san," his mother had told him when she explained what a Sakurazukamori was. "Show them the most beautiful thing in the world. You're the illusion of the sakura and you kill them from their root."
Everything stems from there...
Therefore you must kill the heart first.
"Yes...kill the heart..." he mumbled to himself as he kissed her.
He put everything into that kiss.
From then on, he came back to visit her over and over again. As long as her sister was out, he would come to talk about literature once more.
It was the only way to get to her.
It was the only way he could 'feel' anything.
Using the inanimate object of a book with her heart as the guide...
It was on a temporary loan.
When she found out she was pregnant, Seishirou, for a moment, thought of a dream. They stayed in her home for a whole day talking of books.
He felt like a normal man. He was only twenty-years-old, but it was the first time he felt alive.
As he tried to understand himself through her guidance, he separated himself into two spheres.
The smiling college student who was a pre-med and the smirking, conniving assassin.
When she left him that night, strangely, his strong girl was weak. Wrapping her arms around his waist from the back, she said, "I know."
A jolt rammed inside of his heart.
Shaking her head, she told him. "I know where you go and why. And there is no way I can stop it because it is in your blood."
The blood began to drain from his hands.
It was only she who could make him doubt so desperately.
"But I don't care, Seishirou," she told him.
"How can you not care?" he wanted to ask her because he didn't understand.
"You'll understand someday," she told him as she let go. Kissing him goodbye, she smiled at him.
"Promise me you'll understand someday."
"How can I do that?" his silent look said to her.
When he left, she left.
Only when she gave birth to their children did she appear before him.
She never told him she was pregnant, though...
At a cemetary, she called him out in the middle of the night. He wanted his questions answered, but he knew it was too late. Ian was gone for almost a year. Left without a trace or a word and even her sister swore herself to silence.
Now, as she stood before him, with determined eyes, she stepped forward from a dead cherry-blossom tree. "Kill me, Seishirou."
"What?" he asked her.
He wanted questions answered. He wanted to see her, but she suddenly left him. And those were the first words she said to him?
"I want to die in your hands..." she said to him. Her eyes narrowed. "...or you will die in mine."
Flashes of his mother came to mind and his automatic mode wouldn't take over.
"Why?" Seishirou asked her as she stepped closer towards him with her.
"When I entered your high school, I was given the order to assassinate you."
Seishirou didn't know what to think, but he gave her a suspicious look as she still kept her clear eyes on him. "Who ordered you?"
"Myself."
"Why, Ian?"
"You were growing to be a threat...to the clan..." She didn't say anything more as to why or what though.
She stepped closer to him and held onto his arms. "And then, before I knew it, I couldn't kill you anymore. You understood me, so I never questioned you about anything."
"Ian..." Seishirou was at a loss for words.
She knew of the clans?
"You must kill me, Seishirou or else we will be chasing each other for the rest of our lives!"
"You have to tell me why!"
But if Seishirou was stubborn and mysterious, Ian was his equal. That's why he allowed himself to be taken in by her.
He shook his head. He didn't want to believe what he was hearing. "You have to tell me what's going on."
"There's no time, Seishirou..." At that moment, she held him. "I never questioned you. Please just trust in me..."
He hesitated and she jerked in pain as she began to grab his clothing.
"I can't..." he thought to himself. "I don't want to kill you, Ian."
"Kill me, Seishirou..." she whispered into his ear, beginning to tremble with pain. "...because you love me."
"I wouldn't mind being chased by you." He smirked, but her body was giving out on her.
"The curse of my family lurks within me. My own body will kill me. I will go berserk because it has already invaded my mind." She shouted at him, "DO IT NOW, SEISHIROU!"
A single 'no' screamed in the recesses of his mind.
He became numb all over again.
He ran his hand through her heart.
As she looked up at him, she kissed him.
Taking out his hand, she reached up to tell him, "You understand. You've found yourself."
Grinning, she closed her eyes. "You found me too."
Without warning, the unfeeling assassin found himself crying.
There were no longer going to be beautiful smiles from her...
He thought about what she had told him once,
"No matter how much you may hate yourself...
No matter how many times you separate yourself into different parts or spheres...
You are who you are.
Your heart isn't as weak as the world may tell you.
It's only you who makes it so.
And because you have that choice,
You can make it strong by accepting everything about yourself."
She smiled at him as she said this, "But if you can't do that, I'll do it for you as long as I can. After all, you are only human, Seishirou."
"Do you really believe that?" he had joked with Ian.
But she gave him a serious look. "Of course I do. No matter what you do, Seishirou. You can only grow in my eyes, never decay."
"Ian, why did you become a teacher?" Seishirou had asked her while she looked at him so softly.
"To balance myself out."
"What do you mean-"
"Oh look! The cherry blossoms are so beautiful this year!" she said to avoid the subject.
For that brief moment, in this small dream, he believed it.
Just like when the boy touched him.
He was human...
...and she was too.
No matter how they lived their lives.
For a small while, he held her tightly in his arms, just like he had with his mother. But the silent tears wouldn't stop. With desperation, he questioned himself in a whisper, "But why? Why does it always mean you have to die?"
Mother - You will be killed by the one you love the best...
Ian - You can only live if you can see through the infirmities within your own heart...
Seishirou buried Ian under the sakura tree with his own hands while thinking of her voice sounding sweet and melancholic,
"Your heart is made of glass. You have to break it in order to learn to truly live. Through these fragile pieces, you can see so many different things.
You are nothing if they are in separate pieces, but...
...you can be anything if you place them together."
The woman who looked so sure of herself...
...and he who thought he knew who he was...
...found himself.
That's what the heart was.
You believed in your fragile, yet collapsible illusions called beliefs and dreams.
It wasn't that you didn't see the obstacles in your way.
You had to pretend they weren't there at all.
Turning around, he left without looking back,
proudly splattered with her blood.
Tsuzuku...
-
Author's note: Maybe I should have used a L'arc En Ciel song as I had originally planned. It just happened that this was the only one not Laraku related. I chose this song because it is my favorite anime song. The first one I learned Japanese with and it is Ranma 1/2. All my favorite Ranma songs carry a bittersweetness that is beyond compare. They're beautiful songs, but they're so complicated. I loved this particular song so much because it described me in a nutshell. There was just no other way for me to say it.
And so, I transferred these thoughts into the relationship of Seishirou and his teacher. I wanted to convey a character that was both mysterious yet beautiful. She had to be worthy of Seishirou's affections, but just as importantly, she had to be strong and convincing enough to cause some sort of change within him.
At this age and at this time, Seishirou is still trying to solidify how he is in other's eyes, how he is inside of himself, and how his secretive side comes out slightly into the light. Because this is the middle of the story and one of its focal points, I wanted him to meet an equal.
I had intended for this to be a one-shoter one and a half years ago. It was actually supposed to come out with You Drive Me Crazy as a side-story, but I now understand that it wasn't the right time and now it is. I've thought long and hard about this. An hour went in just for an outline and trying to figure out how to properly execute a transitional period for our favorite sexy assassin.
Gosh, this was so hard to write...took me hours and hours...
Between November 2003 to January 2004