For excuses about why Verda isn't updated, see my bio.
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Part Five - Solstice
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And just when he thought he'd broken her spell, he began to drown.
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June was well underway, and the blossoming summer was very distracting. Hiroaki found it almost impossible to get any work done that morning, and finally resigned himself to a restful lunchbreak at his favorite diner to regain his focus. The TV station was right down the street, so he wasn't in any hurry. He had briefly considered asking someone from the station to join him, but had then decided to savor his independence.
He now sat at one of the outdoor tables, pouring over his newspaper and soaking up the sun. How could anyone be expected to work on a day like this? It wasn't hot yet, but it was comfortably warm and breezy. The scents of various plants could be caught drifting through the air, ensnaring the senses and lifting the spirits, even in the heart of the city. The sky was a completely cloudless, mesmerizing blue. As blue as the eyes of that girl. The girl he couldn't seem to get off his mind.
He was beginning to wonder if she even existed. He hadn't seen her since that cold winter night when she'd come to the pet store looking for cat food. After that, she seemed to vanish from the face of the earth. Though he looked, he never saw her again. He even took over some of Takehiro's shifts at the pet store on the off chance that she would return to their meeting place, but it had proved to be a fruitless waste of time, and it was beginning to make his brother suspicious. She had become his Cinderella, except he didn't have a glass slipper, or even a clue where to start looking. For all he knew, she could have boarded a plane and left the country.
Yet, her memory persisted. She haunted his every waking thought, and frequented his subconscious mind. Her hold on him was so supernatural that it couldn't be possible. Perhaps she was a figment of his overwild, undersexed imagination. What is possible that she never existed anywhere outside his own head, and now he was chasing after a dream?
"Monsieur Ishida?" A soft alto with a flowing foreign accent splashed over him like a bucket of ice water.
He started and looked up from his newspaper. There she was, the very thing that he couldn't seem to extricate from his thoughts. Just to remind him that the world could be fabulously rewarding, completely ludicrous, and painfully cruel at the same time. Now he knew how a taunted tiger felt. It couldn't have been any worse if she was tied to string and dangling in front of his face. If he so much as touched her she could easily fade away before his eyes.
She was carrying what appeared to be a heaping pile of lunch items, and she was grinning at him like Christmas had come early. Compared to how he had seen her last, her simple white T-shirt and jeans looked surprisingly casual, but she was still as stunning as ever. Her tumble of honey colored tresses was pinned up on her head with a few curling wisps framing her face. And those eyes. They were exactly the same as he remembered.
The bruise that had marred her face from the attack in the alley was now completely gone. It was impossible now to imagine that if had ever been there, amidst those dainty features and flawless complexion. All the same, it made him wonder if it was truly heeled, or if she was just covering it up with an abundance of make-up. But her smile was genuine, and genuine smiles are contagious.
"I can't believe it's you," She looked absolutely overjoyed, "Can I sit here?"
"Be my guest," Hiroaki set down his paper and watched her carefully arrange her sandwich, soup, and salad so that they would all fit in front of her and not invade his side of the table. She did this with such a careful precision, comparable to a general arranging her troops. If anyone else had done this, he would have found them incredibly annoying, not to mention neurotic, but he found everything this girl did so impossibly . . . cute.
"So, what are you doing here?" He eyed the heaping meal she had gathered for herself, wondering how she planned to cram it all into that small body of hers. A feat like that would surly defy the laws of physics.
"Eating lunch," She said absently tossing croutons into her salad.
"I can see that. Don't you have school today?" He asked cautiously.
"I might," Was the cool reply.
Hiroaki knew that there was no good response to that vague remark, so he remained quiet. It really wasn't any of his business whether she went to school or not, and he didn't want to antagonize her about it. Driving her away was not high on his list of priorities. She didn't seem like she wanted to be conversational until she consumed her meal, so he dipped his head under the pretense of reading his newspaper, while she proceed to wolf down her sandwich.
She finished the entire thing in record time, and the spectacle was so amusing that focusing on his newspaper was a hopeless task. She devoured it so quickly that it was almost graceful, though he knew it couldn't be healthy. He read the same line five times, before giving up.
"Do they feed you where you come from?" He finally said.
"Sometimes," She managed to reply before switching her attention to the salad.
Hiroaki didn't know what to make of this. She was probably just pulling his chain, but he couldn't be absolutely certain that she hadn't meant what she said. She hadn't said it with any deep conviction, but after she spoke he began to notice just how slender her wrists and arms were. Maybe he was just making something out of nothing. Come to think of it, how did he become so concerned for her well-being in the first place? One would think that he almost cared for her.
A hazy, sunlit silence descended over them while he pondered his next words, and she focused on etching something into her sandwich plate with the teeth of her fork. He would never have taken her to be a property destroyer, but he also wouldn't have thought her to be the school skipping type. She never ceased to continue flipping over new leaves right before his eyes.
"I named my cat," She finally set down her fork sounding very pleased with herself, both by the mastery of her carving and at the fact that she had named her cat.
"Really," He eagerly latched onto this topic that she seemed to be willing to discuss. Maybe now he'd glean some more understanding of this peculiar girl, "And what name have you decided on?"
"Ishi, after my savior," She beamed, "I thought you'd like to know."
"I'm honored," Hiroaki cracked a wry smile, and ventured another toe into more dangerous waters, "Is this the occasion for skipping school?"
She didn't react nearly as defensively as he thought she would. She just calmly measured him with those arresting eyes, as if he'd asked her about the weather, "It really isn't any of your business, but if you must know, it's my birthday today."
She was frustratingly fascinating in that way. She never did or said what he wanted or expected her to. When she looked at him like that, he was reminded of looking into the unblinking eyes of dog. She had the same calm, understanding, and slightly faraway look about her, as if she always had something more she needed, but couldn't bring herself to say. Instead, everything she said was deceptively simple.
"And how old are you?" He asked. Now was the moment of truth. Did he really want to know?
"Seventeen," Her eyes dropped to her lap, "And I'm probably going to get another elaborate birthday present that I don't want, so I intend to enjoy myself now."
Hiroaki's mouth went dry. Seventeen. Somehow he'd always known it was something like that, but now, he couldn't lie to himself. And if she was only just seventeen, that would mean she was a mere sixteen when he met her. The age when most girls were going out with their highschool sweethearts, traveling through the malls in packs, taking magazine quizzes, chewing bubble gum and learning to drive. But here she was, gumless, and looking like somebody's secretary. A secretary that nobody's wife would approve of.
She was far too young for him to be contemplating her the way he was, but she seemed genuinely interested in his company, and he could deny her nothing. For once in his life, he decided to conveniently forget that little piece of information she'd just given him, and not spare it a second thought. Instead he focused on the other half of what she had said.
"Why wouldn't you want presents?" He asked.
"Because I know they are just trying to appease me," Again she mentioned the ambiguous 'they', which Hiroaki could assume anything from without making her tell him an outright lie, "Ishi was a gift from them too."
"But, you seem to like him," He pointed out with a slightly sardonic look, "Enough to name him after a complete stranger."
"I love my cat," Her cerulean eyes sparkled with something that made him want to shudder and sigh at the same time, "But I don't need anymore fancy new clothes or computers."
"Personally, I wouldn't mind free stuff, but your own life is your own prerogative I guess," He leaned forward on his hands and studied her for a moment, formulating what he was going to say in his mind, "If you'll excuse my audacity, I have two burning questions that I simply must ask."
"You may ask any questions you like," She smiled coyly, "However, answers are not guaranteed."
"Alright then mysterious one," He began with what he wanted to know most, "Do you think you can find it within you to tell me your name?"
She ran a hand through over hair and thought for a moment about giving him a fake name, but her lips automatically offered him the truth, "Natsuko."
"Summer's child, born on the solstice," He leaned back and reflected on the meaning with a hazy look in his eyes. It was the most ill suited name for a icy eyed, thick coated, wolf, but it made a weird sort of sense. He studied her intently and then decided to delve deeper, "Just Natsuko?" He pried so gently and had such hypnotic eyes that she almost told him what he wanted to know, but she'd already revealed too much.
She didn't know why, but she was willing to do anything to prevent him from finding out about the Oikawas. It was completely ridiculous when she thought about it. Did she think he'd care if she had a fiancé? She couldn't possibly harbor anything but completely platonic feelings for him, and it was only natural for her to be kind to her savior, so what was her problem? Something in the back of her mind told her that she knew exactly what the problem was, but she refused to acknowledge it. That was crossing the line into dangerous territory, and she wasn't ready to deal with anything dangerous.
"Well, I suppose Suko if you like," She hoped her careful evasion would end his pursuit, but he was not to be dissuaded.
Hiroaki chuckled, "I mean, no last name?"
She just regarded him thoughtfully with the most enigmatic look he'd ever seen, "We may get to that someday. What's your next question?"
That settled the issue and there was no going back. He wanted to press her until he had his answer, but there was something ferocious in her eyes now. She hid it well under the glacial layers of blue, but it was there, burning with all the passion of the raging summer that was her namesake. There were some things that he could never make her say, and if he continued to push her, it would become a contest of wills. A contest that she would easily win. No matter how small she appeared to be, she could still tear him to pieces.
"I've noticed you have a very distinct accent," How could he not notice? He felt silly even saying it, but he wanted to hear her story, "What nationality is it? You'll have to forgive my ignorance when it comes to western culture."
"It's French," She replied easily. Obviously, she got asked this question quite frequently, and she had answers prepared, "I lived in France until I was eight years old."
Now Hiroaki began to wish he'd paid more attention to his geography. He knew France was a country in Europe, and French was one of the romance languages. They even offered French classes at his old highschool, though most people opted for English. But for all this ready information, he wasn't absolutely sure exactly where France was located. If it was filled with people who looked like this girl, perhaps it wouldn't be a waste of time to find out.
"France," He repeated thoughtfully, "That's interesting. So your eyes are real then?" He realized instantly what he had said, and his face faltered, "I mean, I know your eyes are real, but you aren't . . ."
"Wearing contacts?" She finished with another easy answer to a common question, "No."
For the first time he really looked at them, knowing he wouldn't be seeing something false. Her admission was like an unspoken offering that bared her soul him. Those eyes were a window to everything he didn't know, but he could never hope to interpret them. Every time she looked at him he was given an explicit depiction of her current feelings, but that didn't mean the description was in a language he understood. Now she was allowing him time to decipher.
For someone so fiery, her eyes were incredibly cold. They were a sheet of ice, riddled with cracks and fissures of deeper blue. And there was something else he'd never seen before in her. Pain. Pain that evaded all the barriers he'd placed around himself and broke his heart. This brought forth the relentless question that would torment him for many nights, and he'd never be satisfied until he had his answer.
How was it possible for someone so beautiful to be so sad?
"It looks like your finished," He indicated to her now bare dishes, "Do you want me to take you home?"
Her reply was simple, "I'd like that."
