Title: Sculpture #34: Untitled
Author: KobaltWolf
Rating: T
Warnings: Mild swearing, suggestive themes, and because the author is paranoid.
Summary: Konan is depressed. Her career as an origami artist is failing. Her tenement has become the nest of harpies. And her love-life is virtually non-existent. But will the sale of Sculpture #34 halt her seemingly eternal downward spiral? PeinKonan.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to own Naruto or any of its subsidiaries.
Hey, peoples! Sorry this took so long, but I've been focusing on other projects as of late. However, I saw this in my documents and randomly decided to finish Chapter Two. :D Hope you like it. And, please, R&R!
Also, a shout-out to Echo Uchiha and AmegakureAngel for reviewing! I really appreciate it.
Pein.
Konan's hands clenched, turning the knuckles a pale shade of ivory. How DARE he give me an alias!
Well that was the only logical conclusion. No one would name their child 'Pein' of their their own free will. Unless they were captured by Oto radicals who, in an effort to sabotage the Konoha government, forced them to—GAH!
The bluette madly shook her head. It's an alias. Period.
A cool breeze whistled through the streets of a less than nice part of the city. Steely gray apartments rose up on her either side, acting the part of gloomy sentinels, ready to topple down on any intruder foolish enough to stray from the beaten path and, at the same time, providing shelter to those unable to function on the beaten path.
Konan's shoulders slumped as she passed a group of homeless teenagers huddled together under the sanctuary of an abandoned fruit stand. Five? Six? She didn't know the exact number of their group. Quiet snores echoed from their lips, eyes closed in restless sleep, hands and feet twitching every few seconds as their skin rebuked its contact with the icy air. A few feet away, another teen reclined against the wooden construct, keen amber eyes suspiciously following the bluette's progress as he calmly rubbed his dirty, cloth-wrapped hands together in a futile attempt for reprieve from the cold. A terse, unspoken agreement passed between them as the boy nodded sharply. Without hesitation, she returned the gesture. Her recognition as a club member had been accepted.
She trudged onward, her gaze locked on the facade of a particularly depressing tenement. Or maybe that was just her impression. . . . The distance between her and the building closed too quickly for her liking, her hand coming to rest on the chipped brass doorknob all too soon. She absently tugged it open, the lock degraded long ago, and, with dejected acceptance, traipsed up the stairs.
Each step creaked with a subtly different pitch, all off-key. Something slightly above a C# there. Maybe a tone just below a G natural there. The railing was even worse. If burdened with even the slightest weight, the construct would let loose an obnoxious shriek, just high enough to make it feel like it was shattering your eardrums.
Konan's usual rush to escape the stairs had been almost completely halted as she solemnly marched upwards, gray eyes locked on her feet. She took another step.
Silence.
A sigh escaped her lips. The stairway had ended all too soon. Stained, chipped paint greeted her eyes as she glanced upward, a few flakes falling to the floor at the small tremors of her stairway-trek. Scuttling echoed through the hallway before her, followed by a quiet squeaking. Something growled.
The bluette trudged forward, counting the doors as she went. No. No. No. No. Yes. The white paint-job of Apartment 5's door had long since been worn away, leaving splatters of eggshell pigment over decade-old stains of discount beer.
Click.
The key turned in the brass lock with little resistance. Hesitantly, she nudged the portal open.
"OH, Konan! You're home!"
The bluette winced at the near shriek, though she still managed to glare at her pink-haired roommate simultaneously. "What, Sakura."
Haruno Sakura grinned cheerily, revealing a set of pearly, unnaturally straight teeth. "Just saying hi!"
Konan's eye twitched.
"So? Where were you?" The other resident of the tenement, a pony-tailed, blue-eyed blonde, asserted herself.
"What makes you think I was somewhere?" The artist shrugged her jacket off, throwing it in the corner next to the door.
The blonde rolled her eyes. "You're late, and unnaturally gloomy."
"Hm, hadn't noticed," the bluette replied nonchalantly as she examined the condition of their shared room. A few left-over beer bottled were strewn along the windowsill on the. . . .north side of the room, still glistening with alcohol. On the west, garishly red lipstick was smeared across the flaking drywall. South, a streamer or two fluttered from the ceiling. And in the east—was that a pair of underwear?
Konan contemptuously shook her head and stalked over to the offending garment, gingerly picking it up between two fingers. "And what is this?"
"Oh, I wouldn't touch that," the blonde supplied. "It's used." She smirked at the implication and swung her legs back and forth from her perch on one of the room's two beds.
"OH MY GOD. INO!" The article of clothing rocketed by Ino's impassive face.
Sakura raised an eyebrow. "Wow, Konan, I never knew you were such a girl."
"I'M NOT A GIRL."
"Oh?"
"Huh? GAH! THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT!"
"It's alright, Konan! We'll accept you any way you are," the pair supplied earnestly, grinning as they did so.
"But—no—you—whatever." The room practically shook as the bluette stalked to the room's only couch, flopping down on its blotched surface without a second thought. After all, it was her bed. She tugged the tacky green pillow over her head, pressing it against her ears until they throbbed, trying to tune out the harpies' incessant blabbering.
"Oh, come on, sweetie! It's nothing to be ashamed of." It was so. . . .so. . . .mockingbird of them, and Konan didn't even know what that meant.
Taunts were thrown, accompanied by raucous pecking and squeaking. Displaced feathers flew through the air to land on tattered furniture. But the bluette stayed aloft, buried under her pillow until the crows found some other shiny thing to amuse themselves.
". . . .don't worry, Konan. Youalready look the part and still are relatively hot."
"Not as hot as Sasuke."
"I know, right? He looked so sexy today at the. . . ."
The pillow's grasp on her raw ears relaxed its grip. Crisis averted.
She lay there, waiting for sleep to claim her as two constant sound machines clamored in the background. Every few moments, she'd shift her position in an attempt to divert the impending back-pain that sleeping on a 20+ year old couch presented. But nothing seemed to work. Her muscles would twitch of their own accord. And the moment concentration was lost, her eyelids would slip themselves open. Light managed to penetrate even through the protective pillow, turning the prized blackness a burnt and ugly red. And the constant background noise and smell of hairspray did nothing to help. Konan was sure that she'd read somewhere that the human nose could adjust to any scent within fifteen minutes, but apparently her nose had regressed to that of a protozoa.
Wait, do protozoa even have noses?
GAH! The bluette mentally slapped herself. This was the reason why she couldn't fall asleep.
She flipped to the side, face turned towards the couch-back. As a child, she'd been diagnosed with ADHD, or Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder for long, by the school-funded psychologist. Since then, the hyperactivity had long since worn off, but the inability to focus hadn't. If anything, it'd gotten worse. She'd drift off into her own little world during the middle of a conversation, or walk into a telephone pole because she'd start reviewing her grocery list in her head while planning her escape from the harpies. Once, she almost died crossing the street because she'd started thinking about the shiny orange coats crossing-guards got to wear.
The bluette sniffed.
She still wanted one.
Ugh.
SHCMIPP!
The pillow fell to the floor with a sickening squelch as Konan rolled to her feet. "I'm going out."
Her roommates (or jail-mates. Whichever you prefer) barely paid her statement heed. A quick "hm" and "ya" rebounded through the room as the artist swung the door wide and stalked out, haughtily slamming it behind her. From behind the tacky wood, muffled complaints could be heard, but Konan didn't care. Hades could welcome his Furies at the gates of the Fields of Asphodel for all she was concerned.
Now, to the outside observer, such condemnation might seem unreasonable, or even outright cruel. But such criticism was common place in her world, while manners and etiquette had no standing.
One cannot judge what they do not understand, no?
Konan smirked as she trudged down several flights of stairs, creakings and shriekings following her every step, only abating once her feet had left the premises. Meandering down the long-unpaved sidewalk, the bluette absently noted her lack of coat. How irritating.
She tilted her head upwards to meet the cloudy sky of Konohagakure. Even with the late hour, the sky was still tinted gray by the lights of a hundred 24-hour markets, taverns, and co.
Gradually, the slums gave way to cheese-and-wine-tasting shops and prime-location coffee bars. Beggars turned into late-night party-goers in tight-fit dresses and over-priced tuxes. Old tenements became high-rise apartments, and piles of lint and garbage were transmogrified into clean-cut, concrete sidewalks. The plight of the backstreets would never be known.
A sigh escaped her lips.
Humans had an interesting nature to say in the most.
She slumped against the brick wall of a Victorian antique shop, her breath making little, white clouds of mist.
"What is she doing?"
The bluette's eyes met with that of a passing elderly couple. At the contact, the shriveled woman huddled closer to her big-bodied husband.
My appearance must be less than adequate.
She tried to smile, but all that came out was a slight twitch of the lips. It scared them more. The pair scuttled across the street, in that way where they try to look like they're interested in some other city street or building, but where they're really just terrified.
She frowned.
What was she doing?
She didn't need their assurance. Heck, she'd probably never see them again! They were unimportant in the grand scheme of things. They'd go home to their fancy hotel, eat some room service, and go to bed. And when they got up in the morning, the bluette would just be some nightmare to tell there rich friends about whenever they got home to their damn mansion.
Konan pushed herself off the wall, favoring to meander further down the street.
And what was she doing now?
What did she hope to accomplish from this stupid trip?
Crack!
Her fist hit the wall, straight and hard. Passerby shot the bluette worried glances, clutching their fine leather jackets and mink coats to their breasts and hurrying onward.
It was ridiculous!
Karma was still gonna come back to bite her in the butt, no matter what she did. Some starry night and hopeful words of self-encouragement weren't going to change that fact of life.
The cement beneath her feet gave way to green, finely-manicured park grass, the kind that a doting gardener spends years trying to raise and cultivate just so as to be the envy of the local gardeners' association for the duration of a few months, until some other newbie gardener steals his glory away with a flock of rose bushes shaped like various mythical creatures or an ivy plant that covers the entire, multi-tiered wall of an apartment building. The park's grass-gardener wouldn't know what hit him.
She loped to the side to avoid a particularly impressive gnarled oak, its trunk nearly four feet wide at the base. Knobby roots stuck from the ground, probably waiting for the chance to trip her. After all, nearly everyone seemed to be waiting for that.
Scrunch!
With an emotion akin to surprise, Konan's eyes shot downward in response to the unexpected noise, only to meet the now crushed petals of a newly-sprouted dandelion bud. She pulled her foot back with haste, but what was done was done. A possible family-line had been destroyed before it had even started. It was depressing.
The bluette picked up her heel and continued walking, eyes to the ground. She tried to avoid murdering any more plants.
Life is ironic, no?
A smirk traced her lips.
I can't exactly say how or why, but I know it is.
Something wet seeped through her shoes, and she stopped, staring down at the now rippling surface of a duck-pond, its color midnight-black. One of the birds trumpeted quietly in the dark, clearly berating her for the disturbance, and her thought's drifted briefly to Sasuke's hair.
Stay on topic!
Konan rigidly snapped her mind back to a more constructive topic: the category of Pein. One could just envision the fancy calligraphy to go with that title. But of course, Konan was just Konan. No eloquent font for that.
More importantly, Pein. One didn't have the right to drift, after all.
A quick list of known facts: Orange hair. Lots of piercings. Wears black. Interesting shoes. Has some amount of money. Is friends with two drunks and their psycho girlfriend.
A sigh reverberated across the glass-like water as her shoulders dropped. Not much to go on.
Her eyes drifted lazily upward, watching with reserved interest as fog feathered from the pond's edges, like an envious phantom, twisting and writhing into the dark. It was pretty.
Back to Pein. The facts were few to say in the least and speculations were not valid. Cold, hard facts. That was her demand.
Without notice, she began to pace.
Is it an alias?
The first order of business. Aliases were a tricky thing. They weren't inherently dishonest (heck, even she had her share of 'em) but false names and dishonesty often went hand-in-hand. Such a title as Pein was unusual. It was like naming your child Happy but with an emo flare. And let's face it, according to Konan's oh-so-handy-book-of-stereotypes, someone who names their kid Pein is most likely not going to be a very good parent, but he didn't show any signs of mental scarring. . . .of course, her oh-so-handy-book-of-stereotypes also dictated that the bluette was a poor, slum-worn, drug-addict prostitute who slept with any man she could find who would pay five bucks. Completely realistic.
What reason would he have to give me an alias?
A desire to break away? Be rebellious? Hide from reality? All viable. Yet he didn't seem like the type to choose a variation of the word 'pain' as a name. Of course, looks could be deceiving.
Schlimp!
Her foot slammed into the mud as she growled in frustration. It wasn't relevant! Well, actually it was. What if he were preparing to abduct her at their next meeting in order to to use her in a ritual for his evil, satanic cult and—
I'm really not trusting, am I.
She face-palmed.
Maybe trust classes would help. . . .not that she could afford them.
This isn't helping!
Onto the second order of business: was he part of an evil, satanic religious cult?
The bluette deadpanned. That wasn't even worth starting on.
Sigh.
Konan slumped onto a conveniently placed park bench, resting her weary head on her hands. Maybe she should just accept it: Pein was an enigma and always would be. Tomorrow's meeting could help to clear things up, or it could just make them worse. Anything was possible in the long-run, or short-run, whichever you prefer.
Absently, she noted that depression was beginning to set in. The solution? Chocolate.
The bluette stood with renewed purpose, a mildly hopeful expression blessing her visage. Chocolate could fix anything. It was a proven fact.
Her feet seemingly moved of their own accord, carrying her through the dimly lit park. She glanced up in surprise as something wet dribbled down her cheek, only to get a drop of rain in the eye. "NEH!" Tears welled up the offended organ as her eyelid rapidly blinked in an effort to expel the intruder.
Why are they trying to destroy their own kind? I mean, water is water, right?
Poor little raindrop.
Sigh.
She could sympathize.
Street lamps broke the twilight melancholy, and Konan briefly noted that her previously absent shadow had joined her.
On the other side of the street, the neon lights of a 24-hour Texaco lit up their surroundings in an obnoxious, unnatural, bluish tint. Just what Konan needed. She hurried across the road, glancing to the sides periodically in order to ascertain that she would not become a pancake.
I think I'd be blueberry.
But the road was deserted. What respectable person'd be out at 2 o'clock in the morning, anyway?
With a sigh of relief, the bluette slipped into the much-desired convenience store and glanced upwards as the doorbell sounded it's melancholy ting!
"Hn?"
She turned her gaze to the desk, but quickly averted it once more as the sole employee stared appraisingly at her with his one visible eye. Briefly, she wondered how a single eye could bear down on her so much. . . .
"Can I help you, miss?"
Konan started at the voice. "U—um, just looking for a chocolate bar. . . ." Her statement trailed off as she glared at the floor. No, stuttering!
"Well, they're over there." He probably made some abstract gesture to accompany the quotation, but she didn't bother to look.
"Thank you."
Thankfully, the sweets were easily found, seeing as the huge sign for Hershey's new brand of bar was the largest thing in the entire establishment. White chocolate with peanuts. She grimaced. Dark chocolate was much better. And peanuts? Bleh.
Pure dark chocolate.
Now that sounded good.
Konan didn't even have to hesitate in her choice as she plucked the classic Hershey's from its box. With a mildly pleased grin, she turned on the balls of her feet and approached the desk. "Only this, please." To her joy, her strong voice was back.
He barely glanced up from his book. "That'll be one dollar and forty-nine cents."
The bluette blanched. "U—um. . . ." No!
Stupid world! Who needed money anyways?
Me.
GAH!
"Well, I—I, uh. . . ."
He glanced up, and, even though nearly all of his face was hidden behind a mask, Konan blinked as he smiled softly. "No money?"
"Y—yeah." She averted her eyes once more.
Clink, clink, clink.
The tell-tale sound of colliding coins met her ears. Is he going to throw them at me? The bluette braced herself for a piece of metal in her eye as she looked up.
Six quarters sat on the desk, the man still quietly reading, but the button on the front pocket of his coat was undone.
In shock, she cautiously reached out to nudge the nearest one with her index finger.
"Ah, thank you."
The man plucked them from her touch and opened the register, plopping them down in their rightful resting place. "I trust you won't mind if I keep the change?" He performed an eye-smile as he held up a penny.
Speechless, Konan stared at him.
"Was that a yes I heard? Why thank you, miss." He deposited the coin in his coat pocket, buttoning it back up. "I hope you enjoy your purchase." He turned back to his book.
And Konan smiled, her eyes crinkling happily. "Thanks. I will."
~/~/~/~
Again, a quick reminder to R&R! I can't improve my writing without constructive criticism. :) And yes, the Texaco employee was Kakashi. There just wasn't a spot where I could reasonably state his identity.
Chapter Three might be a little delayed, but I will eventually get it out. It will also most likely be the last part of the story.
Sincerely,
KobaltWolf