Chapter 3: Ripples
September air is freezing their cheeks as they go out for a small stroll at 2 in the morning. They had wasted the night talking until they noticed the small slivers of snowfall happening outside the window, and now the Singer is accompanying her miko along a stroll past dark sidewalks, and closed shopping centers. It's a strange thing for a place so lively to be so dark and foreboding when the lights are off ,and the Singer clings to the miko slightly as they walk past an alleyway, and only releases her when they are well past it. The miko chuckles at the slightest hint of fear in the Singer's eyes, but quiets as the Singer frowns at her for laughing, and they walk from then on in silence.
Snow is frosting the Singer's hair with white, and the damp in her hair can be seen as the snow melts to make rivulets of water droplets cascade from the ends of the Singer's wet locks. The miko can't help but let her hand free of it's captivity in the depths of her pocket and have the hand tuck back loose strands of hair from the Singer's cupid like face. The move both serves to shock and awe the Singer as she feels the tenderness in the brush of the miko's callused digits across her cheek.
"You look prettier without your hair in your face," the miko confesses shyly as the Singer looks at her in confusion, and thankfully enough, the Singer accepts the explanation.
They stop under an overpass under the dim light of a lone streetlamp and watch snowflakes fall to the surface of the lake's water causing ripples to form and disappear as the ripples spread out. The Singer leans agains the wall of the overpass, watching as snowflakes catch on her eyelashes, afraid to blink for if she did then the snowflakes would fall to the gravel. This reminds her of the time she tried to taste snow to see if it was anything like ice cream, and she had discovered in dismay that it was in actuality quite tasteless, and that one snowflake was not enough to for any taste at all. The night air is chilly, but it feels fresh when the Singer breathes it into her lungs, no trace of cigarettes in the air to be seen. A shaky breath is let out as the Singer leans her head against the silent miko's shoulder her hair settling like a blanket across the miko's arm which is clothed in a starch gray material. The miko's overcoat is scratchy as the Singer rubs her cheek gently against it as her nose catches the scent of vanilla in the wind and a whisper of lavender scented shampoo. So this is what peace feels like...
The miko snakes her hand down to the Singers' and warms them slightly with hers as the river steadily gains depth as the snowfall increases around them. The miko is used to the cold, since she had to wear her priestess garb in the middle of many winters, but the Singer is shivering slightly as she presses unconsciously closer to the miko. Their breaths are becoming more visible as they are unaware that they are even breathing, the both of them not caring if air actually went in and out of their nostrils, it was a time for when the mind could forget and sink further into white nothingness. It's in these strange snowfalls that moments are made seperating how you feel, and how things are taken in light of, under the lazy swirls that the wind is making at your feet with snowflakes strange revelations start coming to.
The Singer has not removed her head from the miko's shoulder seemingly now connected to it as not even the slightest of noises can be heard. From afar, they look like two young lovers enjoying a moment in time where they can be alone without the outside world barging in.
Zoisite drew in a small breath as the door to the hotel room unlocked revealing Minako in her own usual fashion of baseball cap and shades. Really, they were in another country and yet the Singer refused to dispose of her usual habit of caution, but it wasn't his problem to meddle in. He was specifically told by her husband to take care of her. Anything else on the agenda that didn't fall into that category Zoisite brushed it off. His pen stilled across his page again as he surveyed the notes and found them unsatisfactory and he crumpled it up. The noise brought Minako's attention to Zoisite and they met eyes in a silent greeting.
"I've never known you to waste paper in such a frugal manner of distaste," the Singer said cockily as she regarded Zoisite with a slanted look almost as if challenging him, but the Piano Man refused to rise to it, and instead settled on seething in his chair at the blank piece of paper in front of him newly arrived.
"It seems that your little silent epiphany is stifling my composing prowess," Zoisite sneered content to vent his frustrations out on the Singer.
Minako has never asked for Zoisite's counsel, and yet he seemed to give it to her at the most inopportune moments to just throw her off, or instigate her. Zoisite has always cared for the Singer, but when she chose marriage over the career, she got the feeling that he viewed her as more of a traitor now. She can't help what others feel about her choice of path, she can only accept their range of emotions and feeling of betrayal at her bold and surreprious move, but that alone hadn't been enough to deter her.
"I have never forced you to put up with me Zoisite," the Singer snaps back feeling oddly apathetic at the way he is holding her off on arms length and attacking her the way he is now.
"Someone must keep you on the true and straight path before you manage to bumble it up again, before it was your miko that managed to save your soul, now it is I that is here and not her. Marriage is a wonderful thing, companionship, someone there for you when you get home other than that stuffed cat, isn't it?" Zoisite replied saucily as he started scribbling furiously on his notepad as he watched Minako from the corner of his eye.
"It is whatever you want it to be, as you wish," Minako replied dutifully as she dipped her head low inclining his composition and smirking slightly at the shaky notes sloppily scrawled over the page.
He is slow in his reply, but that is just for the anticipation that he loves seeing on people's faces, and the awe and surprise that comes when the first note is struck. He has never objected to Minako's marriage, and he has never thought of her any less or more now that she is married, but he does know that the Singer posesses a logic far more impulsive than the miko's, and with the right leading hand the Singer may discover why she is dissatisfied.
"I think of you far wiser than that to dive into that sort of foray, but odd things do happen when a mind and heart loses its way, but it's all up to you where you want your life to go. The more you know about yourself the less you find yourself bothered," Zoisite replied applying his knowledge of human pyschological thought and society to Minako's situation at hand. "You really are quite a child out in the world, Venus. Such as was a year ago when you threw yourself fitfully into love like a child for her candy, and now that, that sweet and cloying candy has pleased you long enough now, you find your apetite ruined. Never...steal candy from the unattended jar, Venus."
It's like Zoisite has put a cloth over her eyes as Minako sinks back into herself and feels her heart folding up on itself. He talks in riddles, but he also conveyed truth what was she afraid of? Nothing.
"I have not stolen anything but merely happiness. You don't know what love is Zoisite," the Singer fires back her voice trembling slightly but there is an obvious tone of defiance in her voice that brings Zoisite away from his music.
"No, to put the blame on the right person, I must say that you don't know what love is," Zoisite answered her and swiveled around once again to immerse himself in composing, but Minako was stunned out of silence.
"I may be be foolish in the way I conduct my soul searching, if you can call it that, and I might fair less than you have at such a thing, but at least I do know what love is," Minako hisses feeling like her strength, with every gentle barb that Zoisite dragged through her skin at his words, was being sucked away.
"No dear, on the issue of your marriage, your husband, the lovely little farce you've fooled yourself into, the backside of the mirror, whatever it is...you were simply in love with the concept of being IN love," Zoisite replied not taking any of Minako's words to heart as he shhuffled through his papers. "And that is the main reason why you and many others don't know what love is."
"You're not hopeless," the miko speaks once again as she squeezes the Singer's slender fingers between hers.
It is then that the Singer stirs from her position and she cocks her head back to look at the miko in question, but instead the Singer is caught studying the miko's face, how strong her chin looks, and the broad shoulders, and fiery eyes showing two different emotions clashing together. She wonders how somebody's face could be so much like a mirror reflecting your own one true thought buried beneath the others, and how just the miko's gaze can make her tremble in revelation of her own strings, and then to have her thought thrown back at her shadowed in the miko's features well...that was just icing on the cake. Swallowing slightly the Singer attempts to answer with jovial humor, but she realizes that she shoud never try to joke around, not with the miko.
"You're right. I'm helpless actually, what fate has planned for me is set, and the only difference is how I get there, right?"
"That's not it either," the miko retorts troubled that the Singer could look at her intentions as insincere.
Seeing the look on the miko's face the Singer's humor drops, and she stops smiling at once, noticing that the miko is hurt. The miko has always wanted to be taken seriously around the Singer's presence, even when they were in junior high, and the Singer had teased the miko often relentlessly about it. The Singer is ashamed that she has taken the miko's words so casually to twist it around in ironic humor, especially when the miko has done nothing but try to be a friend to her, ever since her face had appeared around the city.
"I'm sorry," the Singer apologizes.
"No," the miko refuses and adds, "I should be sorry, I shouldn't be meddling in your life, and telling you what to do with it."
"That has never stopped you before," the Singer smirks but immediately regrets it again as the miko glares at her. "Oh god...I'm sorry...it seems I never seem to know when to keep my mouth shut."
"You were going to go kill yourself for the wrong reasons.That's why I meddled because I wanted you to live," the miko replied icily as she straightens up from her position on the wall and faces the Singer.
"I know, and I'm sorry...I really am," the Singer apologizes quickly noticing that same fire burning again in the miko's eyes, a fire to prove herself, and everything she stood for.
Kami...the Singer wished she had the miko's strength. If not only to have the strength to stand by her own convictions, but the strength to tackle new things, like the miko was doing. The melancholy has been disturbed and like a stone cast into water, resolute on where it lands, only bound to make ripples.