Mayu
School work is rather heavy at the moment and there's my casual job. Too tired to write up replies to all those so nice to review. I think I will do it next chapter. Thanks and enjoy!
Chapter Five – Infection
It felt rather strange to view her life from the sideline void of passion and emotions.
Sora concluded after she spent the entire day interacting invalidly with everyone she encountered.
Her mother gave her strange looks in the morning when she barely mumbled her greeting and sat there, starring at the passing clouds until she realized that she had missed her bus and would have to get her mother to drive her to school in order to be on time.
Those acquaintances and friends used to her cheery presence at school were whispering behind her back not-very-quietly about her weary empty smiles that did not reach her eyes. Most dismissed it as her time of the month and went on gossiping about more interesting subjects.
Only Taichi and Mimi were fully worried about her. They constantly glanced at her during classes after she nearly blew up at them for no apparent reason.
Sora had lost her sense of self, the moment she woke up and her feet hit the floor. She could not get him out of her mind. All she could do was to speculate his reasons for befriending her. Everything boiled down to two simple questions by the afternoon.
Does she truly trust him?
And more importantly,
Would he betray her or hurt her like her father and Taichi had?
Sora averted her gaze from her Physics book and took a peek at the clock on the wall, five more minutes until the end of the day. The lesson might as well never began, for she barely concentrated in class and she was thankful that the teacher never noticed.
She only woke up from this disorientated day when the girl who sat next to her gave her a nudge and pointed at the ancient loudspeaker.
"Will Miss Sora Takenouchi report to the office after class please. I repeat, Miss Sora Takenouchi report to the office immediately after class. Thank you." The voice from the loudspeaker croaked and everyone in the classroom lifted their heads and stared at the auburn haired girl in wonder and pity. Some of them even went as far as giving her a few pats encouragingly.
As soon as the bell ran and signaled the end of the school day, Sora stood up and packed her belongings and apologized to the teacher for disrupting the class before she rushed out of the classroom and headed down towards the front office.
Only those students who are in big trouble were called to the front office through the loudspeaker, although there were cases of family emergencies, nevertheless, students considered to be called through the loudspeaker as an evil omen.
She wondered if there was an emergency. For although she was no model student, she rarely got into trouble and the only conclusion she could drew was that something terrible has happened to her parents.
But as she drew closer to the front office, she steps slowed down. In front of the office, awaited the concierge she barely met last night. But he was smiling at he as if they were old friends.
"I'm picking you up to go to Yamato's band practice. Like how you guys agreed to yesterday." He seemed to have sensed her wariness and smiled reassuringly.
"I am Jyou Kido by the way."
"I am Sora Takenouchi." She accepted his out stretched hand and gave it a gentle shake. "I…"
"Sora, wait up!" A shrieking voice called out and Sora turned to find Mimi running towards her and Taichi following her not far behind. She could also feel Jyou hastily dropped her hand and shifted uncomfortably.
"Jyou? Is that you?" Mimi also blanched as she approached Sora and the person next to her. She whispered and simply stared at the blue haired boy.
"Mimi. It has been a long time."
Sora looked from Jyou to Mimi and back and decided that by their reactions she probably didn't want to know what happened between the two of them.
"How is…he?" Mimi asked awkwardly after a little while.
"He's…fine. He's learning to move on and he's…happier." Jyou paused at two places, unsure what sort of adjectives he should use to convey the feelings.
"You think maybe we could meet up sometime?" Mimi ventured a little further but Jyou rejected her proposal as soon as she emitted the words.
"I don't think that'd be wise."
"Oh." Mimi was crestfallen and the look of guilt was clearly written all over her face. "But…"
"We have to go." Jyou cut her off abruptly and steered Sora towards the car park. "Goodbye Mimi."
Sora turned after a few steps and saw a confused Taichi trying to his best to comfort his girlfriend. She gave a sigh of relief; at least he's by her side.
"So you and Mimi knew each other uh." The words left her mouth before she even noticed and Sora nearly kicked herself for her lack of tact.
"We knew each other." Jyou gave a shrug and shifted his glasses to adjust it to the bridge of his nose. "I guess you'd be interested in who 'he' was? Don't worry, it wasn't Yamato or me."
Sora stayed silent, she did not trust herself to talk and not make a fool of herself.
They stopped in front of a champagne colored sedan and as Sora seated, she got the felling of déjà vu.
What's with her and following strangers recently? Had she no sense of danger?
Jyou started the engine and disrupted her thoughts.
"It's no big secret really. Everyone in Odaiba Private knows about the incident and they are willing to tell anyone who is interested. But I think it might be better to hear the un-dramatized version first.
"'He' is Koushiro Izumi. We call him Izzy. He's a computer whiz but somewhat lacked in human relations abilities. Mimi was the first girl he liked and actually gathered enough courage to make decent attempts to get her to notice him. I don't know what he did, but she did notice him and they dated. Somewhere along the line, Mimi learned of the secret that Izzy was actually adopted. She blatantly told him of that in front of everyone who gathered to celebrate Izzy coming third in the annual Computer Wizard Competition." Jyou paused as the car stopped in front of a set of red lights and allowed Sora a little time to absorb the story.
"I always believed that in his heart, Izzy already knew the truth, but he just couldn't accept it at that moment, especially when it was slapped across one's face.
"To add insult to injury, that same night, he witnessed Mimi and another guy kissing and caressing. Turns out, she has been cheating on him the whole time."
Sora brought her hand to her mouth to cover her shock. She could imagine the horror that went through Izzy and she sympathized with him as she related herself to him.
"The guy Mimi was with wasn't you…was it?"
Jyou shock his head and smiled ruefully. "It wasn't either me or Yamato. But we are just as much to blame since we kind of told the guy that it was absolutely fine to get involved with a girl who already has a boyfriend. We didn't think much harm would come out of it. Obviously, we weren't thinking."
"But that doesn't sound like Mimi. I know her and she isn't like that at all!" Sora paused slightly after hearing his explanation and protested.
"I know, it doesn't sound like something she would normally do, but there were a lot of witnesses and it remains that she screwed up big that time."
"Yeah…" Sora muttered non-coherently and there was a prolonged silence in which she became engrossed in her own thoughts. She wondered at how much of Mimi and Taichi she did not know about. They forged their friendship at the beginning of high school and while they spend so much time together that people often thought that they three parts of a whole, the truth was that she wasn't aware of the attraction between Mimi and Taichi, they did not notice of her feelings and there were secrets they kept from each other and hoped it would never be found out.
Her frown deepened as her thoughts led from Mimi and Taichi to Yamato. She didn't know him at all and if her best friends kept that much from her, how much would Yamato conceal?
Jyou glimpsed worriedly at the girl in the passenger seat. She had the look of internal conflict written all over her and it awoke something within him and he felt the strong urge to protect her from the world's harm. At that precise moment, he understood Yamato's obsessive attraction towards her.
She was an enigma.
She portrayed herself as a woman of confidence and strength, unburdened by life's miseries, but when she let her guard down for that slight moment, it was obvious that she was terrified by life and every inch of her screamed 'protect me'. Yet within it all, he could also see the flame, which burned dimly for the love of life. She was confliction and Jyou wondered if Yamato saw exactly that.
"So how are you feeling now?" Jyou asked as casually as possible as images of Sora's tearstained face from her first encounter came back and haunted him.
"Uh?"
"I mean, two days ago, when you ran into us, you looked as if someone has died. Are you feeling better now?"
"Oh that." Sora nearly laughed, he didn't know how correct was he when he phrased his sentences. A part of her had died, but now, that seemed so far away and so unlike her. She turned and caught Jyou's eyes and smiled pleasantly and reassuringly. "Yamato helped me through it a lot. There still are a few tangles in my web of predicaments, but I am sure I now have enough strength to get through them."
"Good." Jyou nodded more to himself than to Sora. "Cause after all the tracking and researching on you I've done, it's nice to know that it was used efficiently and beneficially."
At hearing this, Sora's head shot up and her eyes widened. "What do you mean tracking and researching!"
Jyou chuckled as he witnessed a change in the girl's emotion. He could almost pinpoint the second when the word 'stalker' raced through her mind. "Don't worry, all we did was basically find out which school you went to and the exact location and opening hours of your mother's florist."
Sora gave a sigh of relief. Well, the information they tried to find out wasn't that personal, however, as she measured up the duo's capability to find out her more intimate information, she realized that they would probably do better than a FBI agent. And for some obscure reason, she wasn't afraid anymore.
"Well, to tell you the truth, Yamato told me that he 'found' all those information through deduction." Sora confided with great humor. "You know, Sherlock Holmes style."
Jyou took another look at the girl and turned his attention back to the road. "Well, he's trying to woo you and flamboyancy and a bit of white lies are expected." He replied smoothly but with a tint of blush on his face.
In comparison, Sora's face went completely pink at the suggestion. She stammered and managed to utter a few words of denial incoherently, to which, Jyou found extremely cute and amusing and could not help but laugh out loud.
Sora obviously took the reason behind the laughter wrong as she snapped. "I don't see what so funny about that! He's just toying with me. I know it. What good am I? I am not pretty or that intelligent and from what he has seen, I can sure he thinks that I am as selfish as a human being can possibly be…" She would've continued had not she seen the stern look on Jyou's face.
"Let me get two things straight here. One. Yamato does not 'toy' with the opposite sex. He is the kind that devotes to the relationship. If he's showing interest in you, then he is completely interested in you. Otherwise, he wouldn't be bothered.
"Two. Everyone is attractive in his or her own way. It may not be the most conventional aspects such as beauty but you are attractive and don't let anyone tell you otherwise." Jyou stopped there and allowed the impact of the meaning to sank in and be absorbed.
Sora was silent as they drove past more buildings and pedestrians. His words seemed like a lecture, but as she grasped the wisdom behind it, it became therapeutic. She turned and stared at Jyou in awe. She has never met anyone in life like him, able to dispel someone's fear and uncertainty in a few short sentences.
"So you are telling me that Yamato likes me?"
"I am telling you that you the first girl he has invited into his apartment and band practice and forced me to drive you to it to ensure that you would arrive on time." Jyou said slightly exasperated as he parked the car beside the kerb and turned off the engine.
Sora got of the car and followed Jyou meekly and nearly tripped when she saw the size of Odaiba Private. The campus was twice the size of her public school, there was a humongous car park filled with extravagant and shiny cars. To her left, there's indoor swimming pool, a basketball court, two tennis courts and a park, which at the moment held soccer practice.
She gulped. It's huge and costly to run and Sora realized that her family would never be able to afford to send her to a place like this. Even if she worked her bottoms off and managed to secure a scholarship, the fees for compulsory extra curriculum activities and to fit in would send her family broke.
For the moment, Sora felt nothing but relief that she had never accepted the sport's scholarship from Odaiba Ladies' College. The sport's scholarship only covered for a portion of the cost and as the motto – a college for ladies with pedigree and elegance - insinuate, Odaiba Ladies' College's even more prestigious and expensive than Odaiba Private.
Sora turned her lingered gaze on the soccer field to the white arched building with renaissances styled paned windows and quickened her steps to follow Jyou as he approached that place.
"Don't tell me that's the music room."
"No, that's the music quarter and the recording rooms. The music rooms are in the Seiryu Wing, a little bit further down with the arts department. This is the Byakko garden where we hold most of our major events and such. Suzaku ground was the area left of the car park where our sporting facilities are located at and the main building is the Genbu building." Jyou gave Sora a little detailed tour and directions of the campus. "Apparently, band practice's viewed as a major event and it was given priority to use the much better insulated music quarter."
Sora nodded along but her pace slowed down, as she got closer to the place. The reality of her insecurity hit and the invisible wall pressured upon her once again. She was foolish to doubt Yamato's truthful and honorable intentions, but it's also true that there's such a massive gap and difference between the two of them and there's nothing that she could offer him in return for his affection that could be worth anything to him.
He has it all! He's rich, handsome and clearly at peace with himself.
"I…I don't think I am feeling too well Jyou. I think…I think I should go home." Sora took a few steps back. "Yeah. I think that's what I will do. Sorry Jyou." That's all she managed to stutter before she turned and ran.
Jyou turned around in shock and before he could understand the situation, the girl has gone and disappeared.
Man! That girl can run! Jyou swore and ran his hand through his eccentric blue hair in anxiety and despair. He had promptly failed to complete what Yamato set him out to do and he can just imagine the amount of trouble Yamato is going to have to get through to Sora.
At that exact moment, Jyou no longer envied Yamato and wished him the best of luck.
Okay…the fifth chapter…shivers…I have never ever written this many chapters in my life! That's a record for me. Now, this chapter is written with the haunting and beautiful music of Chihiro Onitsuka floating in the background. The song that stood out most from her album was Infection (at least to me anyway), it had so much emotions built into it, and the song can almost carry you away. I know this song was sung in Japanese, but I urge everyone to try it!
Although no one may be interested in it, but here's the lyric to the song:
Infection"Somehow, I've got to give the answer"
And with it, the weeds on this tongue just grow thicker
The shadows intersecting the pulse
Again winds up robbing someone of their mask
In the night
I sit down as if I'm dead
The fragments of my heart
Exploded and strewn
Glitter all around me
Since when have I
Become this weak?
Even when I become weak in the knees
I'm pretending that it doesn't bother me
This foolish disease of mine
Only grows worse and worse
In the night
I realize this infection
The fragments of my heart
Exploded and strewn
Glitter all around me
Since when have I
Become this weak?
Having started to fear
Every single little fever
Though the odds are stacked against me
I've got to get up
The fragments of my heart
Exploded and strewn
Glitter all around me
Since when have I
Become this weak?
The fragments of my heart, exploded and strewn
The fragments, the fragments, all around me
Since when have I
Become this weak?