If you close your eyes… You can feel it better.

The sun, that is.

Warm, underneath your eyelids, like a fiery sleep.

Laying in that field. Always that field…

By the river, by the bridge, by the road… Not near anything at all…

The far-away daydream of myself.

So close.

FEELING

A FLCL fanfiction

"Does this make you happy?"

"Hmm?" Mamimi opened her eyes to look at Naota.

"This… Does this make you happy?" Naota lowered his eyes, looking at nothing. Of course, he was referring to the rape of his neck by Mamimi's mouth.

She looked up at him, appearing puzzled for a moment, before smiling, eyes closed. Then she began kissing the other side of his neck.

He closed his eyes. "Mamimi…"

Naota wasn't sure why she did it - why she fooled around with him. Even after all this time, he still wasn't sure if Mamimi liked him… In the end, he thought that it had been Tasuku, but here she was… It was if he was still back in sixth grade, and nothing had ever changed. She had once told him that if she didn't do it, she'd overflow.

Whatever the hell that meant…

Naota wondering this didn't stop his timid hand from wandering under Mamimi's school sweater.

He didn't mind the fooling around itself. After all, he was just a boy…

A boy who felt too old for his age.

Even after all this time…

He still felt a little guilty.

"Takkun, I… I'm leaking…"

He had never told her.

"Is that a good thing?"

Even though it probably didn't matter any more… (Since, after all, here she was laying in the grass next to his brother…)

"Yes, sir! It's a very good thing."

Everything felt like a lie.

"Why'd you stop, Takkun?"

He'd sworn that he would always protect Mamimi, but the truth was that he was a coward. He could face giant robots from outer space for her, but he hadn't been able to tell her the one thing she most deserved to know.

Naota sat up, and Mamimi did so as well.

"I… There's something I've been trying to tell you…"

Naota could feel his heartbeat speed up in his trepidation. He had started now, so there was no turning back. What would she say?

Mamimi lit up a cigarette. Naota looked up and felt a surge of familiar annoyance. He hated cigarettes, and he hated that Mamimi smoked them. He'd never understood it before, but now he felt relieved, because for some reason…. Her lighting up that cigarette calmly had made him feel like everything was okay. Things wouldn't change. They were just like always.

"My brother," he began. He faltered for a moment, glancing at her to see if she'd react somehow, but her face was impassive. "He sent me a letter. It was a long time ago… Right after he got to America. In the letter, he said… He told me that… He got an American girlfriend."

There. It had been said. It was out in the open. Finally. He waited for Mamimi's reaction…

Silence.

She exhaled smoke and looked at him. He noticed that the cigarette had writing on it. In small, Mamimi-written letters, it said "YOUR WEAPON IS FIRE."

That god-damned video game. Sometimes he wondered if the ink went to her brain…

In a quiet voice, she asked, "…Why are you telling me this now?", before inhaling from her cigarette again.

Suddenly her calm demeanor did not seem right in Naota's eyes, which were currently narrowed in anger as he yelled, "What?! I thought you'd want to know!"

She just gave another maddening pause, before tilting her head to one side slightly as if considering what kind of drink she wanted. "People… don't like to look at the truth."

"Are you saying that you'd rather I'd lied to you?!"

Mamimi looked over at Naota.

He looked over at her.

She sat there smoking her cigarette. Now it only said "YOUR WEAPON."

Mamimi thought about how Naota hadn't been truthful with her this time, if he was only telling her now.

But before that, she was remembering something that also happened after Naota's brother went to America.

At first, she hadn't been able to reach him. She called him, but he never answered. She sent text messages, but he never replied. Right after she'd lost kitty Takkun, he finally answered the phone. When he asked how Naota was doing she'd said she didn't know who he was talking about. He'd gotten very quiet, and said a quick good-bye before hanging up.

Mamimi had known for a long time that Tasuku was seeing some cheerleader. And Tasuku knew that Mamimi was fooling around with Naota.

"My lie… reflected his lie."

Mamimi moved towards Naota and put her arms around his neck. He looked at her resigned face. Her cigarette now only said "YOU."

"Mamimi…"

"I don't need you to look out for me, Takkun. I don't need you to be my savior."

Naota stiffened in her arms. What about all the times he had saved her? What about his promise? Did she really not need him? He had piloted a robot and saved the city….

"I have Canti-sama."

Ah. So that was it. She loved his robot, but she didn't love him. "He's not a god. He's not some angel. It wasn't his power alone that saved you." Naota's teeth gritted as he said it. "I did it, too."

Mamimi closed her eyes and gently hugged Naota closer to her. "Before you were here, Takkun… Or your brother… Canti-sama was there. He saved me first. Before you or you brother."

Naota realized what she was talking about and pushed forward, tearing himself out of her grip. He turned around to face her. Did she really think that the person that served her from the fire when she was a kid was….

"You think that robot is your savior?! You think he was there in that fire?! You think that robot is your God of the Black Flame?!"

Mamimi stared at him with a fathomless expression. She exhaled a last puff of smoke from a cigarette with no words, and extinguished the butt in the dry dirt. The tiniest of smiles came onto her face. "Don't tell me that you haven't felt it before…"

Naota looked away from her sulkily, feeling that her smile was worse than if she'd started yelling back. "Felt what?"

Mamimi collapsed back onto the grass and stared up at the bright sky. "If you close your eyes…" She closed her eyes. "…You can feel it." She drew in a lungful of fresh air. "The sun makes its way through your eyelids, even if they're closed. Even if you aren't looking, your eyes know that the sun is there."

"That doesn't make any sense at all."

"Canti-sama… Whenever he's around… I can feel it. The warmth of the sun, like a fiery sleep. He is the God of the Black Flame."

"Mamimi, you're just crazy…"

She just kept lying on her back, looking towards the sun, with her eyes closed.

But the truth was, he had felt it. Maybe not in the same way that Mamimi had, but certainly Naota had always sensed that there was more to Canti than just a robot with a TV for a head.

Even before Commander Amarao had ever referred to him as Atomsk, and the Pirate King. Back when the meanings of those titles were unknown to Naota. (Were really, he still had no idea what they meant.) All he knew was that Canti had seemed almost humans at times…

A robot that would sit with Naota outside whenever he was pissed at his family. A robot that would offer him a snack when he was upset. As if Canti knew what he was feeling…

"Mamimi… If Canti-sama is gone, then why do you keep setting fires?"

Finally Mamimi opened her eyes and set back up. She drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them.

"Just because someone isn't here, doesn't mean that you can't feel their presence."

That was true. Even though she'd left four months ago, Naota was always aware of Haruko.

"Mamimi… Let's go home."

"Yes, sir!"

They grabbed their book bags and straddled the infamous Vespa. Mamimi wrapped her arms around Naota, and they drove home.

"Home" was Mamimi's house, where Ninamori would be waiting for them. After Haruko left, both Mamimi and Ninamori had offered Naota a place to stay. He decided to live with Mamimi, because he thought he might upset Ninamori's home life. But after awhile, Ninamori got sick of her father, and asked to stay with the two of them.

Naota parked the Vespa outside and headed in. He and Mamimi sat at the table. Ninamori was just serving dinner.

"Good timing, you two. If you'd have been late again, the food would have gotten cold…"

She set plates down for everybody, and took a seat. She looked over at Naota and Mamimi. They were sitting next to each other again.

The three ate in silence.

Ninamori thought about why Mamimi upset her so much. It wasn't that she was a bad person. She was in fact, the opposite. She'd only ever been kind to Naota and herself. But maybe that was the problem…

She never really noticed before that she cared for Naota. Not until they started living together. Then she would notice when he and Mamimi wouldn't come straight home after school. Ninamori could figure what they were doing. She'd seen them before, from the bridge. And she'd been truly jealous.

Naota could feel Ninamori watching him from the other side of the table. And he knew why. She liked him. And so did Mamimi. Although not in the same way. And Naota was in love with Haruko. Who was billions of miles away.

"Hey. Do you want to get out of here?"

"What?"

"I mean leave. Leave Mabase forever."

"Where would we go?"

"Space."

"What are you talking about, Naota-kun?" said Eri tersely.

"I'm talking about leaving this world, Ninamori. We can go into space and try to find Haruko. And Canti-sama, Mamimi…"

Mamimi was quiet for a moment. "…How?"

"The Vespa."

Right before Haruko had left, she had offered to bring him with her, before finally decided that he was too young to go after all. But she'd brought her Vespa back to the ground and told him that, when he got a bit older, he should come find her. With a bit of practice, she'd said, he could fly it into outer space.

"Are you serious, Naota-kun?"

"Yes. Come on. Let's leave this place. Nothing ever happens in Mabase anymore. Even with Medical Mechanica gone, the people here are completely dense. They don't listen to us. Even after I saved the city, they treat me like a child. But we can get out of here. We can go somewhere and make our own life. Don't tell me that you don't want that…"

Silence.

Then…

"When do we leave, Takkun?"

-END-

Thank you to everyone that read and liked this story. The first version was written over three years ago, and since then, I have toyed on and off with the idea of a sequel. I was watching the series again today, and got inspired (finally) to write the second chapter. Bas I went back and re-read the story, I realized it wasn't up to my standards anymore. So here you have the new, revised version.

Just as a note, I have combined the manga plotline with the anime plotline to create the reality my story exists in. I hope it didn't confuse anyone, because I have scenes from both versions.

I still plan to write a sequel, but not today.

8-10-07