note: Weird formatting. FULLY edited version. Please correct grammar if necessary.
I can't hear what you're saying
what you're doing to me
can't you see
it would take the jaws of life
to pry open your words
- Dishwalla "Charlie Brown's Parents"
Yon-Jyuu-Go fun Kakurenbo
(45-Minute Hide-and-Seek)
It is two forty-four p.m., and he is late.
Again.
She expects this, as much as she expects how he would enter the diner, scratching his head as he looks around before his eyes would fall on her; how he would wave the waitress over before he would sit on the other side of the table right across her, giving her that crooked smile that has broken many hearts, including hers. She knows that his stillness is only temporary, and that after five seconds he would shift his position and would find an arrangement that would not be awkward for his long legs.
She also knows that he is ready to apologize.
She does not wait.
They were always together for as long as they could remember. The five years she lived ahead of him are bleak and pointless, made up of endless days filled with clouds that block her memories. When he arrives in the world, small and screaming his throat raw, she watches him in their mother's arms and smiles as if her life began at that exact moment.
When he is three and she eight, their mother died and it is just the two of them against the world.
Two of them against the universe.
Two of them against their father.
"Fourteen minutes, Sean," Gina Firestone tells him in a crisp voice.
Sean Firestone pauses from his attempts to catch the bored waitress's eye and glances at her. "Hello to you too," he replies sarcastically.
Gina glares at him. "Fourteen minutes, Sean! I'm sure you already know I have much better things to do with those fourteen minutes than wait for you, especially since you're the one who set the time."
"So how much time have we got left?" he asks, giving a derisive glance at her wrist where a slim Rolex is nestled against her pulse.
"Thirty-one. Oh, it just turned to thirty."
He holds up his hands in a surrendering gesture. "Okay, I'm sorry. It's not the right way to start a meeting. Let's start over." He clears his throat. "Hello, Gina, it's nice to see you again. Don't I get a hug, at least?"
"Cut the bullshitting, Sean," she replies flatly, ignoring the twitch at the corner of his mouth. "You know I only have a few more minutes to spare. Why did you contact me?"
"I can't see my own sister anymore?" At her icy glare, he shrugs. "I heard you were in the neighborhood." He pauses when the plump waitress finally gets around walking towards them. "Uh…just coffee. With cream and sugar."
"You get 'em on your own, hon, they're on the counter" the woman grunts, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
"Can't you just bring it over here?" Sean raises a derisive eyebrow at Gina. "It seems I only have little time to talk."
The waitress grunts again and jots something down. "Something for the missus?"
She refuses to be his mother even though she knows he could almost never remember a time when they had one. For her, she felt like she has three men in her lives: him, their father, and their grandfather living so far away and only makes his presence known during their mother's death anniversary, a date the three of them almost always forget.
But for him, she is his whole life. He is deprived of other companions, seen as a nerd in school, forced to accompany her in their tower, he adores her, and tells her she is a princess and he would rescue her.
They are children: he, seven years old and she, twelve.
She laughs. "I'm older, so I'll be the rescuer."
"I don't need to be saved!" he protests.
They love their father, of course, but they hate him all the same. They both crave for his approval, wish for it with every fiber of their being that they push themselves to become better than any would normally achieve. She becomes club presidents, event-organizers, challenger of the oppressed in school, unpopular because of her chosen field. Sean, however, is a natural genius, and has built many of the software the Firestone companies constantly use.
Rebellion is another option, one that Gina never thought Sean would take. For her, she also discovers that she could get their father's attention at thirteen, when she dresses in all black and hangs out with a crowd their father does not approve of.
He asks too many questions then, too. "Why are you being so difficult? Why can't you be better?"
"Like Sean?"
She does not like his questions.
Gina declines to correct her, instead taps her barely touched cup. "Thank you, just some honey for my tea, please."
The woman snorts as if to say honey in tea was the most uncommon thing in the world, but instead, she trudges away and leaves them in their booth to return to their conversation.
When she is gone, Sean asks, "How's Father?"
It takes her several moments to reply, trying to think of a way to tell him in a few words how their father has not changed, that he still thinks Sean should come home, but would not tell anyone how he misses him, or how disappointed he is of his son. She wants to tell him that it isn't her job to replace Sean, but it is how their father thinks of her: a replacement for his only heir. She tries to formulate words for these, but they do not come out, so she replies, "He's fine."
The coffee and other condiments arrive and Gina is grateful for the interruption. She feels Sean's eyes on her as she pours more honey on her tea as usual, and fusses over the plastic teaspoon that she uses to stir the liquid together, trying to get the measurements exactly right and not quite succeeding. He knows he tries to say something, but has qualms so he stops.
After taking her first sip, the moment is gone and she has regained her composure.
Sean leans back on his seat and says casually, "To answer your question in your message, yes. I've seen the Gear Pancratium."
He is eleven, still a child, when he makes his first Crush Gear. She is sixteen, and she has long grown used to alternately feeling affection and hate for her younger brother.
When he shows her the gear, she cannot help letting her interest pique.
"I built it for you," he tells her, beaming.
It is a sleek, black model with carefully hand-painted silver streaks on the hood. The front weapon resembles something like a lance during the medieval ages, making her remember their game of pretend.
They talk about it all night; Sean shows her his first model, still unpainted. "It's mine," he confides. "We can play together. I designed a coliseum so we can fight there."
It is a small ring but they manage to have a match that helps them gain new information and ideas. For the first time, as they stand side-by-side to make modifications, Gina feels that somehow they are equals. Sean is not their father's heir. She is not Sean's older sister. They are again two separate people thrown together and pitted against the world.
Except now they have a weapon. They could destroy their monsters. Their gears would help them stop hiding.
A topic they are equally interested in. Seizing this subject, she says, "So you have accepted the GFA's proposal to make you an agent?"
"Don't be ridiculous," he snorts, dumping two spoons of powdered milk in his coffee. "If I had, you'd be the first person I'd tell it to."
She resists pointing out that she is the first person he speaks to about the matter. "I would have thought that by now, you'd have accepted. It is the correct thing to do."
He makes a disgusted sound at the back of his throat. "The correct thing—" he mutters. "Like making an association, making up rules, organizing official tournaments—"
"If there are no officials," she tells him coldly, "there will be chaos and breaches of conducts. We have done something out of your dream, Sean."
"Our dream," he corrects her softly, not looking at her eyes. "It wasn't only supposed to be mine. It was yours, too."
She does not respond; it is an old argument. She thought they have grown tired talking about it, simple conversation that turns to shouting matches, just as she supposes how their current conversation will also end.
"I built it for you, you know," he says, not looking at her.
There is no answer except, "I know."
And she does know. How could she not? She was Sean's first and only friend and rival then. They were alone, the two of them against the world, and Crush Gear was the machine Sean built to strengthen their bond. Gina had loved it, cherished it, and had thrown it away for a simple word of approval from their greatest enemy, their father.
"I did it to see you smile," Sean murmurs, as if to himself.
After a few months of combined efforts, they managed to perfect their own gears. While Sean designs a larger arena, Gina takes it upon herself to make rules so their matches would not end in arguments since they barely discuss the rules just before a match.
When she tacks the list on Sean's corkboard, he reads it quietly for a moment before nodding and asking some questions that makes her modify some of therules.
They make a good team, she would always remember. It feels right, working with him, or standing across him from the ring, releasing their gears into the arena and calculating the rate of success in mere milliseconds. She loves the exhilaration of fighting against a genius who equally appreciates her own talent to make attacks.
They plan to patent it, develop it, to distribute it to the whole world and prove that this game would help different social groups become closer. Sean names it Crush Gear; the name itself already attesting to its strength and achievement.
Their only mistake is letting their monster into the plan.
"It does not matter," she answers. She tries to make her voice gentle but only succeeds in having it come out short. "You have made millions of children around the world happy through your invention. You have made each and every one of them smile and find friends." It sounds stupid if she speaks about it in that tone.
"I guess," he replies, giving her one of his tentative smiles. "But I can't help thinking…"
"You always think about the most unimportant things, Sean," she cuts in, still reeling at the inanity of it all.
"…that it's always sad that Crush Gear has saved millions of people from loneliness, but I never managed to help the first person I intended to help."
She feels a little angry to think that her little brother had intentions to save her. She is older than him, and she would save herself. "I don't need your help," she says stiffly.
"Don't you?" He glances pointedly at her Rolex watch before taking a self-righteous sip of his coffee.
She takes her own glance at the watch, realizing they only have fifteen minutes to go. She cannot decide if the time that passed was either too slow or too fast. "Don't assume to know how I feel," she tells him.
"I'm not. I just wanted to understand you."
"I'm your sister. What is there to understand?" She sighs. "Look, the reason why I also agreed to this meeting is that I want to try to convince you to come back."
"Back where?" he asks dismissively.
She feels annoyed. "You know, back home."
Sean raises his eyebrows and spreads his arms. "But, Gina, home is where I am at the moment. I have a lot of projects I still need to do and I can't abandon them."
"You always have a lot of excuses," she says, raising her cup to her lips. "They're getting old."
He grins that boyish grin he has. Yes, she thinks derisively, the smile that broke my heart…whatever was left of it, anyway. "They are, aren't they?" he agreed. "Do you know I met that boy from Japan, the little brother of Yuuya Marino?"
"He's not Yuuya Marino's brother," she tells him absently as she replaces her cup on the saucer.
She does not miss the surprised look on his face. "He's not?"
"His name is Kouya Marino," she tells him, then angrily, she continues, "You always accuse me of forgetting, but I remember, Sean. I remember names and figures, and that's what makes me a good leader of the GFA. That's why Father chose me. His name is Kouya Marino, he's not 'Yuuya Marino's little brother'."
Their father only sees Sean's work, Sean's genius, Sean's intent. She is sixteen, and she needs confirmation, too.
When their father brings Sean to his labs, she is left alone in the tower, realizing she feels insecure in her Gothic clothes, her dyed black hair, her defiant nature. Her father has not seen her, will never see her. and would never mention her name in a way that will make her affirm herself. She is a girl, fit only to sit and wait in their mansion.
It is a gradual but inevitable change: the return of her brusqueness, the altering of outfits, the restoring of her gold hair that their father hates so much because it is her mother's hair. She sheds her old disguise to don a new one.
For a month, she uses her old lipsticks to write "Gina Firestone" on her bathroom mirror, over and over, so she would not forget her name.
A few weeks later, Sean asks uncertainly: "Can we have another match?"
"What for?" she snaps, furious at his innocence.
When their father talks to her, he says, "You have to become the best." And she knows he expects nothing from her, but is still giving her a chance.
She takes it. She tells him about her plans to make Crush Gear into a bigger event, to organize official matches, to give separate clubs free reign inmodel-designing. She calls scientists "Gear Masters" and the name is stuck. She gives him a written plan on how she views the Firestone Company would profit from the sales, from organizing the events, and how they would promote it to the different children.
It is she who suggests they use Sean. Cruelly, angrily, she watches as the Firestone Companies exploits her brother into using his invention and demonstrating it to different schools, his online friends, his few friends from school.
Looking back, she knows it was her way of retaliating against Sean's good luck even when her brother had no idea with what she was doing.
He seems surprised at her outburst, admittedly something different from all the angry words they have exchanged before. Then, he asks incredulously, "You're not 'Sean Firestone's older sister', too, Gina."
"Yes, I am," she bursts out, then immediately regrets them. "Let's not talk about it."
"No, let's talk about it," he snaps. "I made Crush Gear so I could free you, my princess from a tower, but you refused it. Do you know how that made me feel?"
"No," she tells him coldly. "I know how it made me feel, though. Father still wants you back, he wants you to replace me. Because of you, I could never be anyone else except your older sister."
"But you're the GFA President now," he tells her, looking confused. "You're the primary financial stock—whatever it is, in the Firestone Companies. You're the director of three different companies. You have your name back."
"My name is there only because you're not," she tells him angrily, pushing away her tea and succeeds in spilling some drops on the table. She does not care. "So come back."
She does it because of their father, because by then she craves not for her brother's equal status but for their father's approval.
She is nineteen years old, already in college studying and one of the youngest members of the Crush Gear marketing committee, when Sean shows up in her apartment.
"I'm not threatening your position in the business," he tells her coldly.
Gina thinks briefly of ignoring him, her fourteen year old brother who speaks in anger without understanding her. She refuses to listen to the small voice inside her, telling her she does not understand him as well. "I don't expect you to."
It is the beginning of their unsolicited meetings. That night, they trek avenue after avenue in the cold of winter, not speaking words but building wariness. In her mind, she feels they are not siblings, but enemies.
"Let's have a match," he says aloud when they reach Fifth Avenue
She glances up at him, a lanky fourteen year old balancing on an apartment step, glancing down at her with an unusual light in his eyes from the glowing lamps that lines the sidewalk.
She wants to tell him to come down, that she is tired of looking up at him even though she was older. She wants to embrace him and say they could make the best of Crush Gears competitions if they work together. She wants to trip him playfully and hear him protesting say her name, wants to forget that she has class and a business meeting the next day.
Instead, she lies, "I can't. I lost the gear you gave me."
His eyes turn dark and he stuffs his hands in his coat to hide their trembling. When he speaks, she knows he is trying hard to hide his anger but not quite succeeding. "I see. It's getting late."
He leaves her on the sidewalk, his footsteps crunching on the snow as he briskly makes his way to the next block and disappears around the corner. A few days later, she hears he has sneaked out of their house in the middle of the night and has disappeared.
That night, she takes the gear she has hidden in her drawers and dismantles every part until nothing is left of the beautiful form her brother has given her.
"I never thought I'd hear you say that," Sean tells her, running a hand through his brown hair. "I always assumed—" He stops, then gives an empty laugh. "I have assumed too much."
"And as I said, let's not talk about it again." Gina takes some paper napkins from the small can at the corner of the diner table to mop the spill drops, meticulously wiping at the bottom of the cup. "It's a long time ago and I'm tired of thinking about it."
"I never thought of you as just my sister," Sean says suddenly.
She stops, refusing to look up at him. Her fingers continue with their work but swipes at places that she has already covered, feeling them twitch and tremble. "You don't have to—"
"You've always been Gina," he says seriously. "The princess in the tower, the one I wanted to save."
"Sean—"
"I wanted to see you smile."
She hears briefly that he was in Germany, most likely staying with their grandfather, but she does not call him. She and her father meet and they talk about Sean briefly, as if it is just a name they happened to both hear of, a subject wedged between discussions on project expansions and the further project of the newly-formed Gear Fighting Association.
When she mentions his name, however, she notices how her father pauses briefly, never looking up from the papers between them. "He has done a lot for the GFA," he replies, as an answer to her question.
She wants to ask, But what about me? Have I done enough for you to think of me once in a while?
But she does not. They continue with their work and Sean's name never breaches their discussion for a very long time.
Every once in a while, she takes out the box that holds the parts of her gear, her gear that has no name, just as she does not.
"That was Crush Gear was for, remember?" he muses. "For the two of us to build a bond?"
"Two against the world," she says, and surprises herself by laughing at the mere childishness of it all; still, it makes her feel better when Sean laughs with her.
"And for us to become better—"
"—than anyone else—"
"—but still find other friends—"
"—and still find each other," she finishes, helplessly feeling sad—feeling!—when their laughter rises together: his, deep slow chuckles and hers, a soft alto laugh. "To be the best in what we could do."
"See," Sean tells her when they have stopped laughing. "This is what I aimed for." And he reaches out to touch her face, his thumb pressing softly against her jaw. "This smile you've always hidden away."
She shakes her head, pulling away. "It's not enough," she tells him. "How about you? Sean, have you stopped running away?"
They see each other again a year after; she is packing for a trip to France when he stops by her apartment in New York. She cannot help being surprised learning that he has returned to America, but she schools her features not to show her emotions.
He glances at her bag and asks, "Where are you going?"
She tells him, then, because she feels he should know, she goes on, "The GFA is organizing the first World Cup Tournament."
"I heard," he replies dryly. He is already tall, at the age fifteen. "The Euro Cup?"
She nods.
"You've never participated in any of the matches?"
"Members of the GFA are not allowed to enter the matches," she tells him indignantly, as if he should know this.
He gives a small sound of disgust. "Then pull away from it," he says softly. "Build a new name, build a new life."
She thinks longingly about that, thinks about again holding a Crush Gear in her hands as a weapon to banish loneliness. But she is twenty years old, a college student and the vice-president of the GFA. And how could she give herself a new name when she herself has not yet acknowledged her own name? She is still Sean's older sister, and she desperately wants to love her own given name.
"There's no reason for me to," she says. Then, because it was only fair, she asks him, "Come with me to France. Father will be there. You can help in the organizing."
"I made Crush Gear to meet new people," he tells her. "To save them from their loneliness. If I can't be made to play it, I can't take part in it."
"Father would be pleased with you if you come with me," she says instead.
For a moment, she sees that flash of light in her brother's eyes, telling her that he is not immune after all, that perhaps they are the same in wishing for Rolando Firestone's approval. But it is gone quickly and he leaves after a hasty farewell. She hears a few months later that he is in Germany.
Her brother quickly retracts his arm as if stung. "I'm not—" he starts, but Gina interrupts.
"Aren't you? Don't think I know about disappointment, Sean. You're my brother, and we have a lot in common. You're afraid of disappointment, you're afraid Father will reject you, so instead of having him do that, you rejected him first. You ran away, literally."
"You always have to say it directly," he says hollowly.
Gina shakes her head. "I say it because you say I've been hiding when you're hiding as well. You said that Crush Gear is for the two of us, but we chose to share it with other people. We used it so other people could bond."
"And isn't it ironic?" he rejoins. "People have made strong connections using Crush Gear but the bond between us three is only superficial."
"Father wants you to come back," she says softly. When she entered the diner, she had had no inkling she could use that kind of tone. "Stop hiding from his presence."
When Yuuya Marino dies in Brazil, Gina admits to herself that she is shaken.
For the first time in her life, she witnesses firsthand how Crush Gear affects people. Yuuya Marino, the Asian Cup finalist and the one who would have stood against the European Champion during the World Cup Finals, is a crowd favorite. He has taught thousands of other children how to play Crush Gear, has developed his own style that revolutionized the way it is played, and is basically the ideal person to carry out young Sean and Gina Firestone's dream.
When it is announced, she watches from her box as Harry Gamble, now bereft of an equal adversary and a possible friend, steps down the ring without waiting for the judgment. The gear that she knows Sean built is packed in a gear box, put away, and not seen again.
She watches as different people sob in the bleachers, each audience remembering him differently from the other.
She is the one to call the parents. She sits in her office and holds the receiver against her ear, forced to listen as Mrs. Marino sobs at the other line. She meets them in the airport and accompanies them to the hospital, where the other members of the Tobita Club wait in silence, their tears spent.
As she stares at the boy, who only a few days ago was so full of life, she remembers Sean and wishes she can cry with them for the loss of a young life.
Instead, she goes to a hidden place and weeps, not for Yuuya Marino but for her and Sean, and how they have unwittingly destroyed their bond and their dream, how her own pride has abolished any chances of reconciliation, how she envies Yuuya Marino's ability to carve his own path with his name while, to Rolando Firestone, the one person they could mean anything, Sean would only be remembered as 'The Legendary Gear God', and she 'Sean Firestone's older sister'.
"I've stopped trying to make him understand," Sean tells her stiffly. "Don't expect me to start."
"I don't want you start hiding yourself from us again," she tells him. Without helping herself, it is her turn to reach out and touch his hand. "You're still our family, and we miss you. I miss you."
"I have to go," he abruptly says, pulling away.
"Sean!" she says sharply and he sullenly sits back. Besides being Gina Firestone, she is still his older sister. Nothing can change that. "Kouya Marino is only eleven years old and he has faced Harry Gamble and Takeshi Manganji. You're twenty-one years old."
He refuses to look at her eyes and they sit silently, finishing their respective drinks, listening to the muffled conversation around them, listening to the clinking of porcelain against utensils, never meeting their eyes. A new game of hide and seek.
A realization, however, is not enough to elicit change.
She meets Sean more in the next years, and when she thinks that she might be able to speak to him openly, they argue again: an endless cycle.
It is a game, she tells herself. They would never break away from it. No matter how much they want to be free of their masks, it has already become a part of them, an extra layer of skin that could never come off.
When Takeshi Manganji attempts to make a VT-Chassis and when Kouya Marino breaks away from Yuuya Marino's shadow, those events mark another beginning for Crush Gear history and their old dreams.
She supposes a part of her mourns, but it is already too deeply buried for her to listen to the weeping.
Changes could not be done overnight; but she and Sean are too busy treading over their broken dreams, that someone else has already snatched it from them and rebuilt it so they could never return to their original fairytale.
Gina rouses herself from the weary silence to glance at her watch. It surprises her to realize that the sun is still up in the sky and that not even an hour has passed.
Sean watches her before saying, "Time's up?"
"Yes." She feels exhausted, as if she has just run a forty-five-mile race without any preparation. Talking to Sean since then has always left her like this, but this is a different fatigue. There is something heavy in her heart. "I have to go back to the office."
"You have a car?"
"No, I took a cab." She begins to stand, fishing for bills from her purse but he holds up a hand.
"I'll pay," he offers, removing some bills from his pocket and leaving them on the table. "I'll go with you outside."
They walk side-by-side, not exactly touching but almost. Gina pretends briefly that she is a princess, and she is next to her prince, her rescuer.
But on the sidewalk, the short dream ends with her prince running away again to become a pauper, and she going back to the tower and pretending to wait for him to come back. She wonders when she would stop waiting.
"It was nice seeing you again, Sean," she says.
"I'll look for you again," her brother replies. He bends down to kiss her cheek and she remembers with some surprise that, yes, he is actually taller than her. "I…" He stops, pressing his lips together.
She raises a hand to flag a cab. One instantly parks next to her, waiting. "You don't have to be angry." She opens the passenger door but he grabs her hand suddenly and she turns to him in surprise.
"I can't stop running," Sean tells her seriously. "It's not just you and Father. There are…but let's stop hiding, Gina. We're not children. Yuuya Marino didn't have to wish for Kouya Marino to step out of his shadow. Kouya had to do it all on his own."
Gina Firestone stares at her brother's eyes for a long time before allowing herself a small smile. "Maybe we'll never be better than children." He releases her hand. "Goodbye, Sean."
"I'll see you, Gina," he says, speaking her name as if it is very important for him to remember it.
For a second, she feels as if, for the first time in a very long time, she has finally understood him.
The realization clogs her throat and blurs her sight. To hide this weakness, she nods and enters the cab, closes the door beside her. She does not have to look behind to know that Sean has already begun to walk away. She does not have to see him to know that the hiding has begun once more. She does not need any more signs to know that they might never meet for a very long time.
From the sidewalk, Sean glances at his own watch and lets a sad smile play on his lips.
It is five-fifteen.
Time to hide again.
-end-
notes: As much as it pains me to say, I know the two are horribly OOC. They're two of my favorite characters and I've always wanted them to interact but it was difficult to write them. The setting is a few weeks/months after the final World Cup match.
One of the (supposed) main points of this fic is to show how Kouya Marino's approach to his family problems (brother's death, expectations for him to be like his brother, his parents' different reactions to Yuuya's death and to Kouya) also affected Gina and Sean's relationship. It was actually inspired by Sean's words: "It feels like I have a little brother." and I was: "What brought that on?!"
While Sean was emphasized to be 21 years old in the show, I was never sure about Gina. If I am wrong, please correct me. Obviously, I have never watched the CGT movie, so I'm sorry if there are wrong things again here.
How Gina knew that Kouya had a match against Harry Gamble: it's a secret. (But, actually, Sean knows about the match, too ) Drabbles at the next part.
C&C's please. Thank you.