Disclamer: I don't own X. I own nothing but my ideas of Clamp's characters.
Many thanks to my beta, Cait-sama
Author's note: this story is an attempt to draw some kind of a background story for parts of X's character's lives that Clamp did not light for us. It is not a statement but a mere opinion.
The Office Lady is a still evolving part of Japan's corporate culture. The term dates back to the postwar economic boom, which brought significant numbers of women into the white-collar labor force for the first time (with so many men having been killed in the war). --
-- As before, the cultural expectation is still for a woman to work a few years, then marry and leave the office. This is common enough that, at the close of the 1980s, a woman's professional "life expectancy" from hiring to marriage was about 6.5 years. Some OLs are kept on staff only to serve tea, greet costumers, run errands, and serve as decoration.
Patrick Drazen, Anime Explosion.
Kanoe: The Office Lady
Shimako and Keiiji walked into my office, holding their hands and blushing.
I raised my eyes from scanning through the Boss's incoming mail to see them and transform for them.
Spread those lips until they'll split your face in two. Sprinkle some glitter in your eyes. Speed up your actions to show excitement. Turn on the heat coming from your skin to make you look beaming.
And here you have the finished result: from the usually grey and dry Kanoe that always sits shriveled behind her desk, a new and improved Kanoe, a completely brand new person, emerges!
All made up for this stupid moment when they'll tell me.
Tell me that Shimako is getting married to Keiiji after their year of small office flirts turning into small demanding hints leading to dates.
Shimako.
A fragile young woman, twenty three years of age, dark eyes, thin black hair like any other girl in Japan. Small fragile build. No ability to grow fingernails strong enough to be long and pretty.
At first I filed her as just another little girl who lost her way home and wandered into our office as I call the other OLs I work with.
But her small sharp eyes behind the large thick lenses of her glasses told me otherwise.
She watched everything, putting all that data inside of her, taking it out only when needed and in the most perfect condition and formulating, after analyzing it perfectly.
She saw Yuto leaving my office a lot and the condition I was in afterwards (I only allowed myself to blush a little! My hair was re-combed, my lipstick reapplied, all the buttons in my shirt and skirts closed perfectly) and smiled at me merrily, praising me of how I had such good taste in men.
I spent dozens of lunch breaks with her, just talking, gossiping and laughing. We never spoke about work, we talked about ourselves and the world around us.
Shimako had a nasty habit of sneaking Playgirl magazines to our lunch breaks. We spent many breaks comparing the average Japanese male to the black or blond gaijins completely exposed across the magazine's pages. One time we giggled so hard that five floors below us heard our laughter.
Shimako was different in her wit and brightness. She shone out like a precious gem amongst tens of small grey office ladies who sat there shuffling papers and tea cups for their bosses, awaiting the day they will be taken away from here by a knight in shining armor.
Keiiji is one of the Boss's advisors (financial advisor!...Maybe cultural?...foreign delegations advisor...!...ah who cares). The moment he laid eyes on Shimako I saw how he marked her as target.
I joked about it with Shimako and she laughed so hard that I was sure his attempts would be stopped.
She promised me she wouldn't cave in.
She broke that promise.
It's not that Keiiji is such a bad guy. He's not the big bad conniving wolf I'm trying to picture him as, it's just that…….
I thought I wasn't alone…..I thought I found a friend who wouldn't go down on her knees as the social expectations from her trample all over her….
But I was mistaken.
I chat with the soon-to-be-married couple then brush them away, pretending that I'm drowning in a sea of paperwork and the Boss will soon want his tea ready.
They nod and leave, waving goodbye merrily.
Goodbye Shimako……
Now I am truly alone.
It doesn't matter because I won't be alone for very long.
I am not the typical Office Lady. I do not think I'm an Office Lady at all!
In a sense I am an Office Lady.
I make tea for the Boss. I wear things that make me a good decoration. I run errands. I deal with the paperwork. I fuss around the Boss as if I am his mother (men must be completely unable to mature if they spend their lives running from one motherly figure to the other….and yet voters, customers and citizens all choose them for leadership instead of women….why!). I let workers higher in rank and experience sneak a pet on my behind along with a random flirty comment.
On the outside I am the perfect Office Lady, though office gossip is so busy over my late age and how I have yet to find a husband that even at night in my bed I can hear them buzzing around my head like angry bees.
But I am not an Office Lady.
I hunted Yuto down like a sniper, practically squeezed him against the wall before I kissed him. I have him spun around my little finger with such ease it makes me laugh. The prettiest worker in the whole building (according to a survey started by the small grey OLs from Citizen Taxing department) and I have him on a leash.
He comes to me on all fours to put in a good word and get his request for a few days off approved.
He takes my small sexual harassments like a bitter pill, as something you just have to go through as a part of being the office worker in corporate Japan.
He smiles so wonderfully when he arrives into my office for a short, 'briefing about the Boss's latest whims' even if he later comments on how I tore him from his important work.
I am not an Office Lady because Satsuki turned the Boss's computer to a small fireworks show when he placed his hand on my thigh.
I smiled, joking that the spirit of computers does not want him to hit on me. The Boss smiled but I could see how his big fat cheeks shook a bit like they do whenever he hides his fear.
I am not an Office Lady because I will not get married. Ever. Especially not to anyone in the office.
I've been hit on by so many other office workers who apparently see me as a challenge, a shrew to be tamed, that I can hardly walk out of the building without being stalked or 'accompanied' by this 'gentleman' or another.
The Sakurazukamori sends me a small gothic jet broach (a hidden obsession of mine, how did he know? I have no idea and I don't care) for every fifth office worker I inform him of.
His shiki hovers above me, awaiting my signal, and if the gentleman escorting me is getting on my nerves he soon vanishes in a storm of sakura.
I wear my broaches like army medals. Whenever someone at the office pisses me off I brush my fingers against the cold gems and remember my powers.
I am not an office lady.
As I take the elevator down to the basement I transform. I shed my grey camouflage cloak and show my true colors.
I beam of red, black and gold. I beam of power.
I gather these Dragons of Earth to save the world.
I am full of power; I am in control. I am the leader.
I am not just another Office Lady here. Here I am Kanoe.
Only at night do I allow myself to shed the glorious cloak of Kanoe, Leader and Collector of the Dragons of Earth.
When I lay in bed and think of why I'm doing all of this.
This is the real me; without masks and costumes, without big words and cunning ideas.
This is the real Kanoe.
"Kanoe! Kanoe! Help me!"
I stumble over to my sister's room. My legs are numb because I sat the wrong way when I did my homework.
Hinoto sits on her bed, crying. Her arms are stretched forward, grabbing air that did not contain me yet, pulling the invisible chord that will pull me to her side.
"What is it, nesan?" I run up to sit on the bed at her side.
She gropes me, feeling my shoulders and face. "I…." she cries in desperation, "I can't see anything," she breaks into violent sobs.
Her room is dark, the shutters on the window are closed so that the early noon sun cannot get in.
"Mother wanted you to dream again, so she put you to sleep," I talk to myself as my bigger sister curls herself on my lap like a battered puppy begging for a soft harmless touch and affection.
I am only fifteen, why should I baby-sit my eighteen year old sister so?
Mother tucked her in for sleep like the men with the government suits told her to.
They spoke a lot about Hinoto's potential and my mother agreed.
She's locking Hinoto in her room to sleep, drowning my sister in a never ending night where she'll sleep and dream of never ending futures. Dream and never wake up.
Mother is so deeply drowned in transforming my sister that she lets me drift away to whatever direction I want in life.
She stopped pressing me to study hard and do my homework like a good student.
She stopped calling me over to the kitchen so that I would learn how to cook and become a good housewife one day.
She forgot to sign me up to an after school club.
She doesn't care when I come back home with a note from my teacher about my bad behavior or lack of study.
She doesn't care when I go out with my much older friends and return, reeking of alchohol and strange smelling smoke, at 4:50AM.
I learnt how to stand on my own two feet. I learnt how to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner while mother is in Hinoto's room interrogating her about her latest dreams.
I learnt how to time myself and schedule my day so that I will be able to read my books, watch my favorite shows on TV, do my homework and study for my tests.
All those things go through my mind as my sister sobs between my arms. It fills me with a vain hope that runs rampant in my head until I feel giddy and restless. I am only a teenager and so I am prone to rash decisions and quick acts about them.
"Nesan?" I say in the sweetest voice I can muster, "Do you want to go shopping?"
Hinoto sniffs and raises her big eyes to me.
They are turning brighter and brighter in color as her developing blindness shuts the light of the world from her.
"Shopping?" she asks in her gentle, high pitched voice. "Mother will be angry…"
"Mother is having her afternoon nap, mother won't notice." I smile like I saw an evil character in my favorite anime do.
Hinoto looks towards the door expecting mother to show up there and yell at us both for plotting against her like that.
But mother is having her afternoon nap, she can't hear us.
"All the girls in my class go shopping with their sisters, it's a must. We can get you some new clothes."
Hinoto stopped going out of the house when she started dreaming and so mother doesn't bother her with shopping for new items to replace these age old rags she's wearing now.
She stopped taking me out shopping too, but I told you about me already.
"We'll have a wonderful afternoon out, what do you think nesan?"
Hinoto stares at me for a while longer before a wonderful smile spreads across her small, childish lips. "Can we go eat Belgian waffles at Le Pantry?" she asks as if her words should be hidden, words of blasphemy.
Here I am, the smaller one, holding onto my big sister like she was a child. Taking requests from her like I was a babysitter and she the toddler I look after. Just now I am beginning to understand how twisted the world we live in is.
"Yes! That's just by all the clothes shops!" I chirp as much as I can to keep the secrecy of our plot from mother's keen ears.
Hinoto almost leaps out of my lap, suddenly full of energy and life. "Then let's go nechan!"
We're off to the great big world outside our door. We're off to an adventure. A forbidden world awaits us outside our door, beckoning us to come and discover it.
We eat Belgian waffles at Le Pantry. We laugh and giggle and shrill over our milkshakes. The looks the other patrons are giving us only heighten our happiness and volume.
We fit on hundreds of items in tens of shops, coming out with so many bags that we joke about needing a chauffeurto help us.
We pretend to be upper class ladies with a real chauffeurtailing behind us as we stroll down the street giggling at how the imaginary man should hurry up to keep with our pace.
Then Hinoto turns to me with a diabolical glint in her reddening eyes and tells me that the chauffeur better be a good looking hunk with a cute ass. I recover my shock enough to giggle and add some of the things that I would like to see on my man into her list of wanted features.
We sit in a park to rest a little and snoop through what we bought, never stopping to giggle and joke.
The sun above us is sinking and the bright blue sky of early summer darkens and dies as the last rays of the sun turn the earlier light and careless white clouds into flaming red gashes in the sunny day's dying body.
Suddenly Hinoto's face turns serious and she looks at me like a real big sister should look at the smaller one.
"Kanoe-chan," she smiled sweetly at me, "how is school?"
I smile back because my heart bursts with happiness. Now I'm the battered and abandoned puppy crawling and begging for a caring and warm touch.
I have nothing to tell her but bad news. The new regime I built myself to improve my academic condition is taking small baby steps too small and insignificant towards full effect and improvement. Sometimes it frustrates me until I want to give up on it. But I'm trying, I'm doing my best to be patient and hardworking.
"I….I wasn't a very good student for a long time….I was full of anger so I destroyed a lot of the things mother and father worked hard to give me."
I ditched school so much and still mother was blind to it like Hinoto will be one day, so I kept rebelling. Kept shooting my own foot instead of shooting mother.
"But I am working very, very hard to correct those mistakes and slowly I will manage to patch my academic career back to a good condition."
Hinoto smiles lightly. "Academic career?" she laughed. "We are girls Kanoe-chan, we don't need careers, we'll soon have ourselves a husband and children to look after."
My mind freezes at the sound of those words.
The dragon who rampaged fire in my chest when I was angry at mother and father for neglecting me is back again.
Rebellion. I was always a very rebellious person. Rebellious and vengeful. I always thought of myself as a wild animal, never to be tamed.
After some moments of silence I decide to brush the subject away.
Hinoto smiles to herself as if the message was well taught to me. She must be very pleased that she finally did something to be a real bigger sister.
"It's getting dark," I say after folding back all our shopping and neatly rearranging them in their different bags, "we better head home."
"Kanoe-chan," she says suddenly, putting such a small and baby-ish hand on my grown one, "do you think mother will be angry?"
Like the streaks of dark blue besmirching the light blue of the early afternoon we headed out to, Mother looms over the joy we have.
"Maybe….but we're going home now so it's okay." I get off the bench with my share of the bags.
"Besides," I let the dragon beam through my eyes, "no matter how much she'll be angry with us, no matter how loud she'll scream at us or punish us, she will never be able to take this afternoon away from us. Never! It's ours forever, in here," I tap on my temple.
Hinoto is caught in my fire. She is ablaze with my excitement and rebellion.
We walk out of the park towards the train station with our heads high and light.
When we laugh at our jokes we laugh out loud. We spit our happiness in the face of the world around us, the world who sulks at us and wishes to sour our joy.
We won't let it because we are together now and we are strong. We are sisters; together we can take the whole world on.
The first crack in this illusion we wove ourselves into is in the subway wagon. Suddenly Hinoto stumbles as her left leg loses connection with her mind.
My sister is eaten by her future that blinds her and cripples her until she will be the perfect dreamgazer.
Years later I saw that clearly and it made sense. Back then I just panicked.
I caught her in my arms, her body so small and fragile after having stopped growing when the dreams came.
We giggle about it showing a stiff upper lip to the people around us. We are two sisters joking around; nothing bad is going on here, it was but a small, youthful slip.
But fear is leaking into my sister's laughter and as I pick it up I start feeling it too.
Hinoto crushed to the ground in the next wagon. There was nothing she could have stumbled on. Her legs simply gave way under her and she fell like a discarded doll, like a toppling building.
This time I couldn't manage to catch her so I rush to her side and help her back on her feet.
But her feet won't cooperate! They're limp and heavy. Every time I try to make her stand, she falls again.
She is silent as I try to help her. The life and happiness of the shopping spree smacked out of her when she fell for the first time.
I look behind my back and see that soon the wagon will be filled with people, so I take my rag doll of a sister and sit her on the benches before we'll have no room for ourselves.
I wrap my arm across my sister's small shoulders and try to tell a joke in her ear.
But my sister can't hear me. She is staring forward vacantly. Her eyes are open wide, staring at a man reading the paper opposite to her. Tears start to form in the big reddening orbs.
"Nechan…." Her voice is small and frightened, cracking as tears choke her.
I brush the hairs away from her face. She is sweating and the hairs cling to her skin.
Her skin is so bright and her hairs, once black as mine, are now brightening like her eyes….like her sickly pale skin infects them with whiteness and if I brush them away they'll stop it.
"What is it nesan?" I whisper kindly, mustn't start a drama act in the train wagon, mustn't stick out of the formal behavior or people will look at us funny. The nail that sticks out will be pounded down.
"Nechan…I can't see anything….I really can't now," she whimpers. She is shaking under my arm. The tears in her eyes fall freely now.
I wrap my other arm around her and rest her head on my shoulder to hide her emotions.
Barricaded by our shopping bags, I sit and shield my sister from the cruel world around us. I try to be strong for her as the night I see outside the wagon's window spreads all around us in my head.
But I am only fifteen and the wagon is full of strangers, some look dangerous to my exhausted-into-paranoia mind.
I am not yet strong enough to protect my sister completely and so the cruel world is raging around us, roaring and clawing at us.
Everything I saw as normal is now twisted and ugly. Everything bright and happy is now dark and evil.
People's eyes turn from a quick glance to long harsh stares.
The closed mouths of passengers who remain silent during the ride open up to me, snarling to expose big pointy teeth.
I shield my crying sister from this world of horrors and start crying myself, crying like the lost little girl that I really am under my cloak of the rebellious teen.
Hinoto still can't walk when we arrive at our station. We have a few more blocks to pass before our home. What will we do?
I am no longer petrified, I am only frightened. I must be brave and strong for my sister.
I take her on my back with our shopping bags in my hands and start heading home.
The buildings in the blocks we pass by are small, the way is really not that long but I am only a fifteen year old girl who isn't very good at gymnastics and never worked at physical labor in her life. As a child I preferred the tea party for dolls over the swing sets, slides and trees to climb, so I never really developed muscles.
Hinoto is heavy on my back. Our bags are heavy in my hands. The fatigue of my great fear in the train wagon slithers through my mind until I'm almost hallucinating how the road stretches on and on and on.
When we enter our home I cannot hear my mother's screams and my father's roars. I am relieved as they remove Hinoto off my back. I am grateful as they snatch the bags from my hands.
A silly smile spreads on my face as a fever I developed earlier in my stress makes me lightheaded.
Then the powerful slap snaps me back to reality. I am too shocked to avoid the second one. After the third I start wobbling on my feet.
I drown in my shock until I can't see the forth coming. The pain goes unregistered.
I can't hear Hinoto as she screams at the top of her lungs for my father to stop. I can't see her as she fights against her heavy limbs and throws herself on him, stopping him from dealing the fifth slap.
Now my vision is blurred because the slaps shook my hair out of it's neat ponytail. They spread before my eyes like a dark veil as I bow my head down.
My head is heavy with pain and adrenalin residue. It's buzzing and thudding as I swing it from one side to the other with each step I take.
I crush on my bed and fall asleep. I am sick and beaten.
In my sleep I call out for the dragon to save me, to pull me in his flight and take me away from here.
The dragon returns to sit on my chest. In my sickness' fever I see him clearly as if it was really here.
I smile at him and he tells me, "What will you do about today?"
"I will stop it from happening again."
"How?"
"I will…I will…" I let the fire he blows out of his nostrils inspire me, "I will destroy them. I will destroy this house. I will destroy the train we were in and the train station. I will destroy…." My fever drowns me in another whirlpool of ache and sleep.
When I wake up the dragon is still curled on my chest, awaiting my answer. He was waiting for me as I closed my eyes for a second that stretched out over three hours.
"I hate them you know, mother and father. And I….I….hate Hinoto for not helping me….but…."
I am burning.
When I wake up the next morning the fever has passed.
The world outside has taken no notice of what I've been through.
As I get out of my bed, walk down to make breakfast, brush my teeth and wear my school uniform I pull myself out of my ashes.
I am reborn from the ashes of the girl who burnt to death last night.
The dragon is no longer my childish imaginary friend that only I can see.
The dragon has scorched himself into my body, into my heart, into my mind. His snaky body flows in my blood, spreading its fire inside me.
I will destroy this world. I will save my sister. I will kill my parents. I will burn this house down. I will kill each and every man in a suit that comes to talk to my mother.
I am the new Kanoe, rising from her ashes brand new and complete, never to burn again.
I am strong.
I have a new cloak.
Years have passed since that day when Hinoto and I were truly sisters. The new knowledge poured into me changed the world as I saw it.
I still have the dragon, though I no longer think of him.
I am still strong, rebellious and vengeful.
I am still cloaking myself.
I have grown up and, as all grownups do, I shed many of my childhood and teenage dreams. I scattered my infantile promises to the wind like the ashes of a departed relative who wished to be one with nature in death.
I kept two of the things I promised to the dragon in me:
I will destroy this world.
I will save my sister.
I will not live for long.
Those who keep a dragon within them will one day burn in its flame.
I am not an Office Lady because I will never have a husband and children.
(End)