You shall be cursed in the town, as well as in the darkness. When entering, and when exiting. You shall be cursed. That shall chase you and destroy you. The sky turns red, the ground turns black. Your corpse is a gate to the skies. Be the prey of the beast on the ground.
-KannazukiNoMiko Episode 1
Himeko has violet eyes and pretty hair that she likes to tie back with a red satin bow. Long legs. Small breasts. She's sweet and eager to please, clumsy too, and, frankly, just a little dim. She likes lollies and ice cream and the ocean. She hates it when people touch her hair. When we have lunch together I give her sweet bean paste and European pastries just to see her smile.
Having lunch with Himeko is nice. She is a nice person. There's a little lawn hidden behind the roses, out of bounds, and I bring a picnic basket full of food and delicate china. Since she boards at the school she can't bring much herself, anpan buns that she can sneak from the lunchroom, cakes that she makes in cooking class. She has only one uniform that she has to make last all week. Every night, she says, she brushes the skirt and sponges the blouse and hangs it all up to dry. She's always being bullied. Himeko is sweet and dim and eager to please and to a certain kind of person, a certain vulgar kind of person, it's a red rag to a bull. There have been times when she has come to our special place, late, with food or paint or dirt smeared down her skirt and in tears because she know she'll be in trouble from the teachers and up all night washing and pressing.
Himeko likes fairy tales. She likes stories about kappa and kitsune. She has a strange taste for those German men, the Brothers Grimm, although the story of Hansel and Gretel makes her eyes turn dark and she'll never tell me why. She has long pretty blonde hair that she won't let me touch and pretty white skin that turns blue when I press it.
I love her voice. It's not particularly special, there's nothing overly musical about it when she talks or screams and she certainly can't sing. She has a proper Japanese voice, high and girlish, sweet like she is. I have a deep, unfeminine voice. I'm told it's elegant and commanding. I can sing and I can play the flute and I can play the piano. She likes it when I play the piano for her.
She's nice, that's the problem. She is the archetypal nice girl. She's the nice girl in every book and movie, the one that the hero always ends up with. She is sweet and vulnerable and strangely incapable of taking care of herself even though usually, nothing builds resourcefulness like being an orphan. She won't tell me how there's money enough for her to come to our exclusive, expensive school. I've no doubt that somewhere, at the bottom of it all, there's a corpse.
She wears my clothes sometimes. I dress her up so she can go on dates with a boy. Only Himeko could be so oblivious to the fact that he's smitten with her, even though she's smitten with him too. She likes boys, and they like her. They look at her and see a girl to marry, a girl to cook and clean for them while they stay late at work, sleeping with their secretaries. She likes girls too, but not in that way. Not like I like girls. Not like I love her. I love Himeko. When she takes off the garments I've lent her I bury my face in them, in her smell.
I love how she's so imperfectly perfect. I love her long, long legs. I love the way her breasts are small and round, smaller and rounder than mine. I love the way her nipples are so pale and pink and ringed with little ginger hairs that scratch my own darker nipples. I love the way that her hips are ever so slightly chubby and bruise under my hands. I even love the way her face flushes when she cries.
She's a photographer, did you know? Not many do. She has a little camera and for someone so clumsy she is amazingly discrete. Most people don't even know they've been photographed. She takes wonderful photographs of people. It's an art few can understand or duplicate, and in the school laboratory she rinses paper clean of chemicals and hangs pictures of people laughing, eating, running. Taking good portraiture is a skill I have never mastered. It's strange to think that there's an area that I'm only barely competent in, instead of perfect and brilliant like everything else. It used to bother me before I met Himeko. I felt incomplete. Now I don't care. Himeko is the photographer. She takes photographs of me. She makes me look almost human. Softer somehow. Warmer, not like in the photographs taken at school or for my father. She tells me that I'm beautiful. A lot of people do. Coming from her it's special and it makes my heart flutter in a way that it shouldn't. Pretty Himeko. Poor Himeko. I wish she wouldn't scream.
The hair between those long, perfect legs of hers is ginger. It's strange how these things work. The hair on my head and my body is perfectly matched, but she's ginger under her arms and between her legs, on her breasts even, but the hair on her head is long and soft and blonde. She turns her head away. Her lips are sticky and salty with snot and tears and taste delicious.
Himeko is clumsy. It's amazing how often she trips and falls over. It's perfectly adorable, even though I do worry that one day she'll bloody her nose or break her arms. Once, she arrived at our secret meeting place with her stockings shredded and stiff with dried blood at the knee. She wears thigh-highs, elasticised at the top. When I made her take them off I caught a glimpse of her underwear, worn and slightly shabby. I bathed her grazes with a handkerchief dipped in mineral water. She made the sweetest sounds, little mews of pain and discomfort and soft little giggles when I tickled her behind her knee. She doesn't shave her legs. She doesn't have to, it doesn't really show but it's soft and fine and pleasant to the touch. I love it. I love her. I love touching her.
She isn't very strong. She isn't athletic; she doesn't play sports unless a teacher makes her. She can run if she has to, and she often does because she's always late, but her hands are delicate and her arms are slender. Not much muscle. It doesn't take much to hold her down. I wish she wouldn't scream.
I really do.
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Cross posted to you-know-where with two sentences left out of this version. Written for Woodburner/The Liminal Fairy's Birthday. Named with her kind assistance, posted with her kind permission.
