Rhapsody Theorem

[ part 6 ]

Disclaimers: Revolutionary Girl Utena belongs to Be-papas and Chiho Saitoh.

Warnings: Everybody will be OOC, drug-addicts, and raving lunatics. Lots of rambling and surrealness, half of the fanfic might not make any sense. Rated NC-17 for the themes mentioned above, language, as well as... implied sex? I guess so.

Rants: This takes place after Utena 'escapes' from the TV-series Ohtori. What exactly happened after the million-sword-stabbing-her-body incident that Kunihiko Ikuhara effectively blacks out upon? Well... this is one take, and highly unlikely. By the way, this has no relation to my previous RGU fanfic, "Ugh... Men." You might be able to catch the deja-vu similar-names of the 'Real World' characters to the 'Ohtori World' characters...

Summary: Utena has a dream, then attends a lecture on campus.

Radishface

Utena was shivering when she woke up, and she looked to her right, where Anthy was supposed to be nestled in the other bed, covers drawn up to her chin, like they were last night.

Of course it was empty. But there was nothing to be worried about, because Anthy was outside, making breakfast, like she always was. It was nine in the morning now, a weekend, one of Utena's days where she could just not worry.

She didn't have anything to be worried about, though. She was just an impoverished college student, trying to get by without too many bad influences. She was just a girl who wanted to lose herself sometimes, because it was too much. She didn't even know what it was.

She had a dream that there was a man in a strange, colorful world, with beasts of all shapes and sizes around him, laughing at him, or with him, she didn't know. And the man was walking around and around and around doing different things which Utena couldn't remember. Utena remembered he was trying to save something, someone, and the beasts would have human faces sometimes, colorful, gruesome, and sometimes, they would help him, and sometimes, they wouldn't. And then one day he was tied up by the creatures and strung upside down on a wooden beam, and they beat him and kicked him and threw things at him, striking him with canes and poles and swords.

The man had struggled, had bled, had cried out for help, and there was nobody to help him. The monsters, laughing had laughed and changed colors, glimmering red then green then orange and then rainbows, and they had kept hitting him and beating him until he stopped moving. His eyes were open, wide, blank, and all the blood had disappeared, somehow, whether it had seeped into the ground or the monsters had licked it off, she didn't know.

The monsters kept striking him, and the man hung there like a rock, unmoving, not responding to the blows that fell on him, even though Utena could see his chest still rising faintly, up and down, up and down. His eyes were glassy, pools of emptiness, and there wasn't something right about it-- even if he were dead or still alive, there was that eerie feeling that he had some sort of inner revelation that he couldn't have had--

didn't need to--

he should have died. But he wasn't dead, just unmoving, just letting the blows hit him like he was a dead object, a lifeless thing.

Then they had stopped, had untied him, let him go. The beasts had retreated, and he went rolling down a grassy hill, the sun shining up above, the birds singing, the picture of endless fields and picnics and family outings and things like that, but this man, dead eyes, wide eyes, distorted the picture. And in his head, Utena could sense something tumbling, something turning, like gears in a clock, over and over and over again, a clicking sound as he rolled, like something being jolted out of place,

and then he fell into a lake waiting at the bottom of the hill, the water sparkling, the sun shining down still, and the water reflected the sun and it was too bright to see-- only the rainbows from the water, the clear blue depths, and Utena swore she could see all the way down.

The man had then frozen, had stopped breathing. And slowly, little by little, his body became a mass of individual, tiny diamonds, still clustered together in the shape of the man's body, the colors still intact.

A fish swam up-- and Utena remembered, that fish had also fallen down the hill with that man, except at the time, it was a lamb, a little black lamb, and Utena remembered, yes, it was the same little black lamb which had followed the man around when he was in the village of beasts, compliantly, except she felt that it

didn't want to

but was

obligated to.

She didn't understand. She didn't understand then why the fish swam up to the man and ate one of the diamonds off the man's body and then had froze, stopped moving, and become a mass of diamonds as well, eyes huge and glassy, lifeless, yet something working, something still thinking inside the head.

And then it had swam, or floated, to the shore, where there was a girl playing, and this is where Utena came in, because that girl was her.

She was reading a book by the shore, or building a sandcastle, or gazing out onto the lake, and when she saw the beautiful, glassy, shimmering fish swimming up to her, she had stopped, and smiled. It was pretty, she had thought, it had suddenly escaped her mind that just a few minutes ago, the man had been beaten by the beasts of that village on top of the hill, and it was just that

this is a beautiful thing.

And when Utena touched her, a scaly, slithering, cold feeling went up her hand, and she realized that her body was disintegrating into diamonds too, except it wasn't.

And she had walked with mechanical movements, like her body was just some outer shell she wore, and inside, she frantically tried to control herself, tried to regain her power over her body, but it just kept walking, and walking, and the man was forgotten, and the fish was forgotten, and she had the same glassy-eyed stare they had, and she walked into a school, she thought it was a school, and it seemed to be the same school of beasts, except they all wore smiling human faces, even though they said

she's a different one, stay away from her.

And she had woke up.

It meant something. It had to mean something. She couldn't associate anything else with the myriad of images. Her life had been dreary, dull, lifeless before this, no matter how hard she had tried to make herself feel alive by swallowing pills, going to clubs, trying to follow a lifestyle she felt suited her.

What was it?

The blank, glassy eyes scared her. She didn't want to look into them, yet she knew that at the end of her dream, she had possessed the same look, the same features.

I don't want to be like that.

Utena huddled into herself, closing her arms around her legs to stop herself from shaking. She wasn't crying, her eyes were dry. But she didn't know, couldn't think--

I don't want to be like that, to be like that man, to be like the lamb, I don't want to have the same empty mind with everything in my head working but my body not responding, I felt like I couldn't do anything, I could only see where I was going, where I didn't want to go, but I kept going anyway, and all I wanted to do was break out of that shell, break out and control myself again like I had done before--

The alarm went off, and Utena gave a start. She stared blankly at the alarm clock before reaching over to turn it off, to stop the incessant high-pitched beeping.

Minutes later, Anthy came in, wiping her hands on the apron she was wearing, and jumped a little when she saw Utena on the bed. "I'm sorry--"

Utena felt like laughing. "For what?"

"I don't know. I thought you would be washing up, so I came in to make your bed."

Utena felt her mouth twitch, and then burst out into full laughter. "You don't need to," she said, surprisingly sincere. "I've never done it myself."

Anthy blinked in surprise. Utena had never spoken this cordially to her, much less laughed in her direction without being terribly derogatory. "But Utena--"

"Stop it." Utena said, still smiling. "I don't want you to feel obligated to."

"Obligated?" Anthy blinked, and Utena heard a chittering sound, and an white, furry ear poked out of Anthy's hair. There was that rat again.

"Like that lamb in my dream." Utena stood up, and stretched, letting out a yawn. "Just following me around--"

"What?"

"Never mind."

Doug was waiting for her at the bottom of her apartment stairs, arm linked with Syle's. He waved as he saw he approaching, and Syle acknowledged her with a nod.

"I guess this means that she's permanently my roommate?" Utena glared.

"Why not?" Doug looked at her curiously. "You're getting along well enough."

"No, we're not." Utena huffed, and started walking. Doug and Syle trotted behind her like a couple of poodles.

"I don't know." Doug said from behind her. "I mean, I've been contemplating the whole moving-in-situation for quite a while now."

"Will you be able to study?" Utena remarked sarcastically, turning to face him with a wry smile on her face, walking backwards.

Syle politely looked away and Doug mock-glared at the pink-haired youth.

"A healthy environment is essential for studying." Doug nodded. "You're a slob, so that Anthy can pick up after you. Syle here is a slob as well, so I can clean up after him."

"Then why don't we just switch off?" She clutched at his arm and made puppy-eyes. "I'll miss you, and you see Syle every night anyway."

"Dear, I get tired at night. It won't be 'let's have a welcome party,' it'll be 'let your poor roommate go to sleep after the exhausting before-sleep activities he's done.'"

Syle coughed.

Utena let go of Doug's arm, and fell into step beside them. She made a note not to step on the sidewalk cracks, although she wasn't sure why. Hopping over one and timing her steps so she wouldn't step on the next one, Utena looked back up at the two men who were accompanying her. "Remind me why we're going to the campus when it's a weekend?"

"Because." Doug assumed a lecturing pose stance. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get to listen to a world-renown professor lecture about the whole time-space phenomenon who actually knows what he's talking about."

"He's just a crazy hippie," Utena heard Syle murmur, and Doug punched him lightly in the arm.

"No, but seriously." She said, stopping at the intersection. The cars were zooming past her at an astonishing speed, and she felt a little nervous. "He's world-renown? Why's he coming to this slum?"

"I'm kidding." Doug looked at her disapprovingly. "Don't you remember? He's the psycho who lives up there in the same penthouse as Jerry. In other words, not world-renown, just local."

"What makes him a psycho?"

"Nothing, really." Doug ran a hand through his hair, and they crossed the street, the cars passing along them, parallel, and Utena thought she saw a dark-skinned man smile at her from the red convertible that suddenly went by. "He just popped up here one day and started taking notes."

"Right." Utena looked at Syle, who was looking at Doug with a certain amount of amusement in his eyes.

"He's stopped 'observing' us, but it doesn't matter. I don't even think he was in the first place."

"Who is he?"

"He doesn't talk to anybody. He's just sort of the mysterious rich guy."

"I see." Utena nodded, still confused. "He's a professor?"

"Sort of. I think he came from another school before he came here and retired."

"He's really that great?" Utena shook her head. "He just sounds like a mediocre person to me. You're just going to listen to his lecture because he's the mysterious rich guy."

"A nice sort to get your hands on." Doug winked, and blew a kiss in Syle's direction. The green-haired punk didn't react, but something softened behind his eyes. "And besides, he's not all that bad-looking either."

"Really?"

"You wouldn't expect a professor of physics to be around his twenties." Doug grinned. "And in great shape."

"So now he's the beautiful mysterious rich guy."

"Basically. Ah, Nemuro Mikage, if I could only get my hands on thee-- ow!" Doug winced from the blow Syle struck to his head. "The hair!"

Nemuro Mikage?

Utena tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.

How are you here?

That same question to you as well.

I don't know-- it just happened.

That is how I felt it. But I discovered the rest.

There's more?

Haven't you ever wondered about your life before?

I try not to.

It's important, you should know.

You can't tell me these things.

I will eventually.

Nemuro Mikage had been as good-looking as Doug had described him, and even the semi-possessive Syle (one could never tell if he was or not, with his silence and all) had a gleam of appreciation in his eye. The man's hair was a washed-out color, as if he had been a former punk himself and had dyed it one-too-many-times, and he wore a navy blue dress shirt and white pants. His eyes were red, which gave Utena a start, and she realized that his hair wasn't washed-out-looking because he had been a former punk-- he was albino, or something like that.

But his skin didn't look pasty at all.

His voice was very pleasant to listen to-- soft and husky, a bit of a nasally sound, but it wasn't bad, no, it just added to his composure. He spoke with a tone that was knowing yet not conceited, and as he lectured about quantum physics and time and space and the string theory, it was as if he knew it all, as if he had traveled to the ends of the universe and had seen everything and he knew everything there was to know.

Like he had traveled to the ends of this world.

Utena shook her head, and scowled. She was forgetting something again, but she didn't want to remember it.

And then that professor had seemed to look up directly at her when he was lecturing, had made eye contact directly with her, and alarms went off in her head, that he knew something, he knew more than Anthy did about why and how she forgot herself and who she was and why she was here in the first place.

But that was stupid, impossible. She had lived here her whole life. At least that's what Doug said.

But Doug didn't really say that, something whispered. He just told you about what happened before. Not for your whole life.

Utena clutched at her hands, and tried to still her heart, which was beating erratically.

But Touga didn't really say that, it whispered again. He just interpreted it differently.

No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't. She took a breath, and the red haze went away, and she sat up a little straighter.

Doug tapped her shoulder, and Utena looked up, to realize that the lecture was over, that the students were all filing out the doors. Her psychology professor, surprisingly, was talking with Nemuro Mikage.

"He wants to see you." Doug motioned down to the waiting teachers. "I mean, Mikage does."

Syle cast her an indifferent glance, and Doug pursed his lips, punching her arm lightly. "Although I really have no idea why."

Utena got up and patted his shoulder and gave him a smirk. "I'm sure he's straight. Too bad for you."

"And you're his type of woman?" Doug raised an eyebrow, amused. "You're already Jerry's."

Utena fought back a blush. "I'm not."

"You are."

"Not."

"Are too."

She stuck her tongue out at him, and ended the squabble. Doug only laughed, and then led Syle out by the arm.

"I still don't know why he wants you down there and not me." He called back, and Utena chuckled as she heard an 'owowowow' coming from his direction. Looking back, Syle had pinched his ear in one hand and was dragging him out the door.

"We'll give you fifteen minutes, dear ~" Her ex-roommate called, and Utena struggled not to think what that implied.

She looked down, at her professor, and then at Nemuro Mikage. He looked up at her and smiled, those blood-red eyes reflecting something that whispered knowledge, wisdom, yes, I know.

Doug didn't know why she was wanted down there.

She had a feeling she did.

Sorry for taking so long with this chapter! ^^;; And yes, I'm back in the groove, so the next chapter won't take me so long to finish. What does Nemuro Mikage have to say to Utena?? Ooh, scintillating.