Chapter 4: Bloodwork

Cameras are clicking about Minako's head as she turns this way and that in her french maid costume with the duct tape around her ankles and toes swiveling around in a world of color. Everytime the camera lenses go off dancing lights are brought to life in her vision swirling, swirling, gone. Minako can count them if she keeps track, for every flash there are five and in turn all five sparkle and fade into the air, and all she sees is white as the bottle she is brandishing in her hand seems to crack beneath her grip.

"More cute! More cute!" the Director shouts at her from somewhere, anywhere, nowhere.

Minako tries to do as he wishes pouting at the blinding lights watching their faces hurtle by per second, per heart beat, per eyelash flutter. The pills in the bottle are rattling against her sweaty palm, but she keeps on spinning, she can't stop less she might fall. She is aware of the heat flaring across her cheeks, but she ignores that anyway, and she tries to count the lights to ignore the dizzying feel that she is spiraling into a world of color, static, and voices, but she is. She feels that she is falling and the lights are the only thing that are reminding her that she is awake.

count the lights...breathe...

Rei

Usagi

Zoisite

Husband

Everyone

ReiUsagiZoisiteHusbandEveryoneReiUsagiZoisiteHusbandEveryoneReiUsagiZoisiteHusbandEveryoneReiUsagiZoisiteHusbandEveryoneReiUsagiZoisiteHusbandEveryoneReiUsagiZoisiteHusbandEveryoneReiUsagiZoisiteHusbandEveryone

Thud...

That's all Minako can hear as her head hits the floor. She is swimming in a world of black, swimming, swimming, who knows where? Looking for something...a question, an answer...

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It's the time of the day that Minako doesn't like it...Nihhon is as hot as ever in the summer as Minako exits her limo already sweating, but the smile never strays off her face as she approaches the door to her place. There is a homely air around it, but she knows when she enters it all the inhabitants will be fast asleep lulled by their sea wave stereo speakers into silence. Better yet as she opens the door she is greeted by complete and utter darkness and now she has to grope, and imagine where the things are around her house, but it doesn't bother her that she doesn't remember what the hell is around her house any way. She can't remember where the kitchen was, or the trashcan, or the tv. For some reason she has ended up in the living room. She can feel the leather couch, the low table they had bought last summer, and the bamboo tree that has been festering in their living room for over two years already, but the thing that mosts dominates the living room is the tv. It's a surround sound dolby with a screen that spans a whole wall in the living room...Minako barely watches tv at all since she spends so much of her time in it, and her husband she knows only watches the infomercials, so why do they have a tv that is so huge that you'd need contacts to see straight after staring at it for awhile? The surround sound system...well that had come for free since Minako thought well if the tv screen cost so much then she might as well forge away on the sound system so whenever she turned it on she'd better be able to go deaf. She lingers on the tv, on what it is doing in her home, and passes by her eyes now accustomed to the darkness enough for her to not have to feel her way around anymore.

The tv has started to remind her where the things around her house are, and soon enough memory starts to kick in, and irritated she stares at the ventilation system above her head making that dreadful cranking noise. That noise has been with her since day one in the house, and it is the only noise that can be heard around the house at night, she wonders about it by day, but by day she is already out of the house. Minako ascends the stairs curiously and now she notices the bedroom...strange that it should be in the farthest corner of the hall when the guest bedrooms dominate the hall.

Minako enters cautiously and sighs softly when she hears slight sounds coming from the earphones her husband has on. Every night he is taken away to a place where the sea calls, and the wind can actually be heard over the music played in Nihhon, and he goes there without her. Minako opted to toss her headphones into the trashcan not wanting to be taken away so easily to a place too quiet to be real. She wonders how he can sleep like that, his body lying flat against the bed, his arms against his sides, and his legs slightly apart, but still straight, she wonders how uncomfortable he must be in that position every night. The sound of the sea is haunting in the starkly white room as Minako sits on the bed never taking her eyes off of his face, as even she can hear every time the waves seemed to crash against shore, and wonders...why they couldn't they buy a house near the beach where he could be with the waves everyday, and be happy, but instead they are looking for a place in Saitama.

"..." Minako can't remember his name...

But she knows if she calls him he won't answer because he's been taken away somewhere else where there was warm sand, instead of a cold bed, and warm sun, instead of a heating vent above him. She remembers the nights where she had woke up vivid in and out of dreams and how he didn't seem to hear her, and she would wake up alone and fearful, until she could finally recognize the four walls around her. Her home. Home. Doesn't feel like...

They have left so many things unsaid between them, and every time they don't agree on a subject they drop it, and dance around the subject never touching it again, just leaving it unfinished. He wants children, but she doesn't, and after the first time he had brought it up they've never talked about it ever again. He wants her to spend more time with him and his family, but she can't, she is constantly reminded that she has a career, his parents never call the house anymore when she is around.

The chill of the night air is dawning upon her skin as she realizes that it is late, and that she must return to her bed for at least a few hours of sleep, and she takes another passing glance at him, and goes to the opposite twin bed, and lays there...count Minako, count...

12345123451234512345

The miko stood there staring at the round crystalline object, hesitant as if she could feel the one glaring eye stare through it at her, studying her face and expression. She had been called here anonymously by a man concerning Minako's health and if it was anything she would have brushed it off saying that the Singer's business was her business. Rei is not the type to meddle in something she got burned by sticking her hand in no matter how long ago it was, but here the miko stands nervous and licking her lips, her face looking younger than it ever did in this one moment of uncertainty and anticipation. The white door that holds everything in, all the pieces in place is literally ripped away to reveal the man that had fought against her in her Senshi day, a man that was the anti-thesis of all she sought to protect and love was here standing in the doorway as thus to welcome her into a starch white hotel room for what?

"Minako..." the name is spoken softly and tested on the white-haired antagonists' tongue and he smiles slightly at the stunned miko who is feverishly and frantically trying to get her act together. "Doesn't know you're here, and besides she's sleeping, but I don't want you to miss the oppurtunity of wishing her well, come in."

"I..." the miko breathes her own ribcage felt like it was crushing her chest in fear and deep-rooted anger. "don't think that's necessary, I'll come back later."

Zoisite won't let the miko go this easily not when she is awaiting at the door to greet the Singer. He won't let go of his prey so easily.

"No. You should come in less you spoil all the surprise in getting you here, Minako would be pleased," Zoisite eggs the miko on dangling Minako's name in front of the miko's nose like bait.

She takes it. The miko enters cautiously, she has seen Zoisite on the news and knows that Zoiste and Minako have repaired their misshapen kinship, but the miko did not know that she would ever have to look at his face again. Especially after all these years. Rei refuses the tea offered her opting to sit on the couch furthest away from Zoisite's gaze.

Zoisite notices the tensing of Rei's figure. It can't be helped he thinks to himself that the miko would not want to so easily place her trust in him, he did after all in the past try to kill them, especially now that the miko has something to hide from. Zoicite can't help but try to indulge himself in this reckless carving of wills, it is simply bloodwork to him to push people past limits and inhibitions, and he wants to see how far he can push and unravel the miko. She is like a sweater neatly knitted and arranged, and he is curious, poking and tracing. He is delighted to try and find that one loose thread... that one idle string to grasp and pull. It is in his nature as such to be imposing, to be malevolent, to carry out his good intentions in a manner that provokes anger even from the side he is siding on.

"Why is Minako sick?" the miko asks rigidly her eyes fixed hard on the closed door so carefully closeted by shadow.

"Everyone gets sick. You forget that now you are just as ordinary as people," Zoisite replied testing the water. "Minako was sick when she was a Senshi also, or don't you remember?"

At the mention of Minako ill Rei tenses yet again, but chooses to fake a mood of aloofness to try to throw this clever Pianist off his track, but Rei can't hide the sudden flashing of rage in her eyes. She can't help but direct all her energies on this man standing in the middle of Minako's hotel room who is contradicting her own struggle, his very presence is stifling out her purpose, the very breath he breathes meant to clash against her own way of life. He has a life of luxury, she has a life waiting on hand and foot for people, for politics, for results.

"I do," she grits her teeth, and replies every word that exits her mouth is forced out, pulled out like a magician making a rabbit appear from his hat.

"It's funny the way we fight against fate, and how fate and destiny just pulls us closer together, the more we struggle the more tangled we get," Zoisite presses further and deeper into the crevasse of weakness that he saw in the miko, into the wound that had not healed, the itch that never went away.

Rei sits her face seem to be set in stone as no motion comes from her lips or graces her body as she watches out of the corner of eye Zoisite, regarding him warily, but neither making a dive for Zoisite's taunts.

"What am I saying, but the mere push of oblivion, when people sit waiting for a revolution in front of the square boxes that sap away all the fruit and joys of their life? Every history that is embedded in pages and pages of books and novels. We are living in a world of peculiar people, all the same souls, phoenixes, but what we do have is memory. The memory of mistake, and yet we seem to be repeating it over and over again, we bury war, and then by pure curiosity dig it up again. We bury the ashes of love, the beginning of star-struck infatuation into the bowels of our chests, but by chance, chance nothing more than irony at some point in our lives resurrect the spark, the crush that was deemed to die in shadow and dark now brought to light!" Zoisite attacks Rei his own passion and opinions terminating all thought from his mind, and he speaks himself to Rei, shows himself, and his soul bares its teeth.

"You speak of nothing! Talk, is that all you can do? Say?" Rei retorts her face a mask of revulsion and disgust her body tense and ready to run at any moment, but her legs remain stiff like blocks of wood, and she is faced with a very much impassioned pianist to deal with.

Rei can feel the guilt weighing in on her on silver scales, and she can feel his eyes boring their way into her frame, and she can't help but believe all those statements were directed at her. The miko's bones feel as weak as jelly, her mind as bendable as plastic, cold as fire, and hot as ice. The most bendable of steel, the lightest of darks, weightless calamity, it all horded into the miko's mind forcing rationality to jump ship.

"I don't know---," the miko starts, but is cut off by Zoisite who won't give her a chance to speak, to retreat.

"Love moderately true love doth so….Shakespeare, you've probably heard of him."

The miko is washed away in flames that seem to lick places that are so hard to reach in little niches of her own mind, and the wave is crashing up against her, wave after wave, and ebb after ebb the string unwinds. She tries to pile new things on top of herself, goes to new places every month, she has never settled down in over years, she has been to the most remote, and most accessible places in the world, but she can't ever hide the old face that craved and thirsted for the old fire, the flame that was literally alive that she could feel burning beneath her fingertips, the kami that she beseeched to in the flame's flicker, but she can't run and go to her safety anymore.

"But what are you afraid of?" Zoisite goads the miko, he taunts her, and pulls more unraveling until he finishes. "Afraid that what you find when you take the first dive into deep water, afraid that what you find may not be warm, but icy and cold... enough to gnaw away flesh and bone, seperate veins from arteries, and that is when your heart shall beat no longer to the rhythm of her breaths, to the slight...flutter of her eyelash. Afraid that what you find may be not what you expected... a love that falls apart, sex that doesn't feel quite right, the breaking of tender flesh underneath the constant pressure of white teeth, and all alone we stand contradicted by our own laws, alienated by none other than ourselves."

"I'm not afraid," the miko challenges grasping in the dark for her own strength and conviction to make her words sound strong, brief but adamant, her words have lost the luster of passion, and her own presence now dulled by the foray of his words.

"I'm not afraid..."

Her whisper is like a wind-chime in the approaching dark of the last hours of afternoon, the last ray of sun is splintering through Victorian curtains, and she sees the slivers of daylight escape quickly from the etchy sky replaced by charcoal, by night. Zoisite has said many things, but his own message is cryptic buried beneath comparisons and prose, she wonders if that's how he composes his music in the same aggressive manner. The same cold efficiency of one on his prey until he gets it right, that one note that he has reached for until he composes his masterpiece, until she can't quite hold together underneath his play of words.

The tide is coming in on her, her reality is still set in stone, she just needs to answer his question. She has a problem she needs to face, this is not the time where lovers should play romantic games, and where the kami above should laugh at lovers' lies, but still her visage is in place as she murmurs against the rising in the room.

I'm not afraid."