AN: New feature: now Madi and Kim have also decided to become the official Fire Department for Neverwhere. This means they will be responding to all future flames, not me – because, as Kim put it while catching me in a stranglehold, "You just suck!"
This post was delayed due to a dress I had to make over the weekend. This was not optional. It's for a grade in my AP 2-D Art class.
NO UPDATES for the next two weekends, because I won't have access to a computer.
Beta & Fire Department: Kim and Madi
Review Response:
Just to everyone: Sorry, guys, I can't answer questions on the future here. I told you that already, although it's possible you didn't read the AN.
Love Love Love: MommyRogers, saturnova, xl-twisted-lx, esther, Xoni Newcomer, AnimeFan-Angel, and OspreyAnimeG
Translations:
kanji – Japanese lettering
sake – rice wine; traditionally served hot
Chapter 7 – As I Walked Out
"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow."
– WH Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening"
Following Kanaye wasn't as hard as she expected it to be. He moved much more slowly than she did, and the early morning darkness provided a lot of cover, as did building corners. He didn't turn around even once as they walked down the city blocks.
The place where he stopped was what surprised Hinata most of all. It was on its own block, enclosed by a wrought iron fence. Grass and trees rustled and whispered, just out of reach of sickly pale streetlights. Kanaye went through the open gates with Hinata trailing him discreetly at a distance. She looked at the kanji on the iron twists above her head: "PEACE," it read. She entered.
The rows of cement and granite blocks were long and many, interspaced with strips of grass and tree and sidewalk. All the blocks were sized differently, some more ornate than others. Kanaye strolled down a row and stopped at one. He hunched cross-legged in front of it. Hinata ducked behind a tree.
He drew out a bottle of sake from the depths of his big navy jacket and clinked it onto the cement before him, along with two ceramic cups. Hinata watched the steam wisp away in the wind as he poured the hot drink into both cups. He placed one cup on the words "IN LOVING MEMORY OF" and took the other into his hands. Kanaye knocked the two mugs together and then took a long draught from his.
"Happy…uh…Death-day, man," he mumbled. "Hope the girls are all over you in heaven or whatever."
He went quiet and Hinata's breathing suddenly became too loud for her ears, but he didn't hear, and he didn't look over his shoulder. Kanaye rested there for a small eternity, sipping hot sake.
The sky got lighter as he stayed there alone, and little chalky motes of orange and pink started to dust themselves over the skyline. Kanaye finally stood and looked up, pale skin glowing with dawn, black hair reflecting and refracting the orange and yellow. He looked like a young god rising. Hinata blushed under the shadow she hid in as Kanaye ambled out the gate, hands stuffed in pockets.
One ceramic cup was left on the stone, Hinata noticed, and it was still full of slowly cooling liquid.
00
Hinata knew it was none of her business. Still, the fact that Kanaye had visited a graveyard at four in the morning was unnerving. As she glanced behind her at the blazing sky, she decided not to ask him.
Kanaye was striding faster now, and Hinata abandoned a little stealth so she could keep up. She was finally forced to break out into a run, her shoes thumping on the sidewalk heavily.
She looked up and Kanaye was gone. Hinata kept running, wildly glancing around to see where he was, and squeaked as she was yanked into a shadowed side alley by one arm: Kanaye's raised fist stopped only an inch from her face before he recognized her. His face twisted into a grimace as he fought to assess the situation.
"You…followed me?" he tried, forcing his arm down to his side. Hinata shakily nodded and brought her fingers up to entwine them with each other as she stared numbly at the concrete beneath her feet.
"Why the hell did you follow me! I think I made it pretty fuckin' obvious that I wanted to be alone if I left that early!" he exploded, clenching his fists at his sides, his face darkening like a thunderhead's. "You could've just left me the fuck alone!"
Nothing came out when Hinata tried to speak. Her heart was jumping in her chest, frenetically thumping out a tattoo loud to her ears. Her eyes were wet and she trembled like a leaf in a hurricane.
"Fuc – no – don't cry," Kanaye panicked, remembering how Hinata wasn't Sorano. "C'mon, Hinata…"
"I was worried," Hinata said in her smallest voice.
"I'll walk us home," he sighed stiffly.
Kanaye helped her out of the alley and into the morning sunlight. The screaming of cars as they zoomed by was the only thing that interrupted Hinata and Kanaye's new silence. They walked a block or two that way before Hinata started speaking again. When she did, she laughed.
"You were right about me, that night you got drunk and asked me about my life," Hinata smiled, feeling a bit better. "I did have an unrequited love."
"Sasuke was your lover-boy?" Kanaye prodded, his tense muscles relaxing a bit.
"No," Hinata answered. "His name was Naruto. He was the strongest, kindest ninja in my village. I loved him with everything I had, because he was everything I wanted to become."
"What happened?" Kanaye asked, despite himself.
"My arranged marriage," Hinata replied. Kanaye took it all in and thought about it.
"Why are you telling me all this?" he finally asked.
"I think I'm dead," was Hinata's lament. "The dead don't need secrets anymore."
"You mean you're a ghost possessing Sorano's body?"
"I don't know."
Their apartment building materialized through the smog, a rust-colored affair with mirror windows that made it look like picture frames for the sky. Kanaye brushed back his hair with long fingers and crossed his arms. He stopped walking.
"Me and him were friends since we were little kids. He was one of those guys who needed to have the perfect grades, but he didn't have a photographic memory or nothin'. So he started doing shit to keep him up all night to study. About a year ago he overdosed and died," he gruffly admitted, looking far away into the horizon. "They found him on the bathroom floor shaking with bloodshot eyes and an empty pill bottle, and by the time they got him to the hospital he was gone. This is the first time I've visited him since then."
"I'm sorry," she muttered.
"Don't be," he said. Then he seemed to zoom in on Hinata, his face torn but still bright.
"You'd better not tell my mom about any of this," he warned. "Just to make sure, I'm going to have you do the ultimate swear…one that has been passed down from generation to generation over the millennia – "
Hinata swallowed.
" – the pinky swear," Kanaye enunciated melodramatically.
"Huh?" Hinata backtracked, thrown into the sort of vertigo only Kanaye could create. "Pink?"
"No, no, no, pinky as in the finger. Here, let me show you."
Kanaye looped her pinky through his and curled her other fingers down with his other hand. The sun peeked around its orange clouds to watch them.
"Now repeat after me. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye…uh…something something something something."
"I don't think you can die more than once," Hinata mused, moving her face closer to his.
"Just say it," he rebutted irritably.
She did.
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"Why are we doing this again?" Kanaye grumbled.
"Akina is a ninja named Sakura that I used to be friends with," Hinata explained again. "And I have a drawing in the art show, so I should be there."
"Right, right" was Kanaye's tuned out reply. School wasn't far away enough that they couldn't walk to it, but he really didn't like standing there on a street corner, waiting for Akina to come down. "We've been standing here for fifteen minutes. Is this one of those 'fashionably late' girl things? Or is she just not going to – "
00
" – show up," Akina was saying as she twirled the phone cord around one tapered finger, crowned with golden gloss. "But I'm going to try and get dirt on her, so don't hang out with me unless I come up to you first, okay, Akiko? Tell the others, too."
With that she replaced the phone on its hook and clicked over to the mirror in her heels to rouge her lips into a glowing shade of peach-pink.
"You're going to be late," Kado called from the kitchen.
"No, I won't," Akina barked back, clipping her purse off the chair from which it hung and checking the mirror for last-minute imperfections. She sighed. "Hinata probably has some dress sense, but Kanaye…he'd better not wear something stupid, like – "
00
" – my beret?" Kanaye smirked, adjusting the limp black hat on his head. "I found it in my mom's closet, buried under a whole bunch of her 60's crap. And look, here's a fake moustache I can add on."
Hinata plucked the moustache from his grasp before he could paste it to his face.
"Please don't," she groaned. Besides the black beret, Kanaye wore a black collared shirt and black pants. With the beret on, it made him look like a foppish art critic. Hinata deftly slid the moustache into one of the bushes lining the sidewalk.
Akina swept out the apartment complex door at that moment, keys jangling.
"Hello, Hinata-chan," she smiled. "Sorry I'm late. Hey K – …oh my god."
He wiggled his eyebrows at her and twirled an imaginary moustache.
Akina went for the beret to snatch it off his head, but he pulled away and leaned out of reach.
"Hinata," he complained. "Do you see what she's doing? I told you I wouldn't put on a fake accent if I could wear the beret, and now she's trying to ruin our deal."
"Please, Sakura-chan, just leave it," Hinata muttered. Akina gave up.
"If they ask, I don't know you," she grumbled in Kanaye's general direction.
Kanaye had offered Hinata only one maxim before they had left his apartment: "The way I look at it, you have to be either drunk or insane to go to an art show." He felt that this justified the beer he'd downed before leaving. It was, as he said, "just enough to get a buzz going".
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Half the school was there. The art ranged from stunning to abysmal. Here was a triptych, each panel six feet tall, painted in acrylic. Three flowing faces peered out from the canvas, each bleeding from their forehead. There was a nondescript, blotchy pencil landscape right next to a charcoal and graphite dreamscape of a bright tree choking on black ice. There was even a suspiciously cubistic ink and watercolor piece taped to the makeshift gallery door, probably because there was no other room.
Hinata watched the shifting, laughing, loud crowds from her niche. No one had come up to ask her about her piece yet, a graphite portrait with oil pastel blue eyes. She was hunched in a corner, next to her portrait of Naruto, trying to ignore the thumping bass speaker across the room. Kanaye was talking to some of the people he hung out with at school, and their obnoxious laughter easily carried itself to Hinata's ears. Akina chattered with her clique in the center of the room.
Kanaye moseyed over and slouched against the wall next to Hinata.
"Are you sure she's not pulling your leg?" Kanaye questioned, eyes on the flashes of Akina they could glimpse through the walls of people.
"What?" Hinata asked.
"Y'know, pulling your leg? Yanking your chain? Pulling the wool over your eyes?" Kanaye continued. "Eviscerating your dignity unbeknownst to you, maybe?"
Hinata looked blankly at him.
"Are you sure Akina is a ninja like you?" Kanaye finally demanded.
"Yes."
"Fine, as long as you're sure," Kanaye relented. "I'll just be off to grab some of those little mini cocktail hotdog things, then. Never refuse free food, that's my motto."
Hinata watched him duck under and around the bodies to snatch tasty morsels from a proffered serving tray. Akina clacked over to Hinata in her heels just then, offering Hinata a smile.
"Do you need a break?" she asked. "You've been standing there for almost an hour, I think. If anyone comes over, I can talk to them, even if I can't remember as much as you do yet."
"Well, I do have to go to the bathroom," Hinata said doubtfully.
"Go, then," Akina insisted. "I can wait here until you get back."
"Alright," Hinata agreed, and slipped off through the crowds herself.
Akina glanced at Hinata's final piece then, and couldn't look away. Hinata had somehow managed to catch a spark of that devious piety that was Naruto in her work, one that found its way past the face that was frozen on the paper. Maybe it was the singular blue she used for the eyes, Akina found herself thinking.
"Kinda looks like me, doesn't it?" a heavily accented voice asked in Japanese from behind her.
Akina's breath caught in her throat. The boy standing there smiled cheekily, the grin spreading from one side of his face to the other in a flash. He had golden hair that radiated out from his head like a halo and eyes that shifted like the sea, flashing green and blue in the bright studio lights.
"I-I – " Akina stammered, faced with a world of possibility and bewildered on what direction to take. She glanced at the door to the girls' bathroom to see if Hinata would be able to offer support anytime soon.
By the time she turned back around, he was gone.