Heads up: Next chapter will be a one-shot of epic proportions. I literally get excited just from thinking about it. This is just to keep you occupied till then.
Warnings: I read other author's 'author's notes.' Can't help myself – I'm nosy by nature.
Extra warning: This ficlet is to be enjoyed like a piece of 85% cocoa dark chocolate: slowly. Guiltlessly. Artfully.
-x-x-x-
It's that time of day – too early to hope, and far too late to fear.
The sun is warmer on this day; a richer, deeper yellow than its usual garish lemon that fights with the corners of his eyes. It streams through the windows and into the classrooms in an almost liquid solidity, tangling itself around the corners of desks and chairs – the world drowns in sepia for a split second, flooding Japan as he waits indefinitely without an ark to save himself. Shadows stretch long against the walls. He can make shapes of them, but not sense.
He likes to think of her at this time. Something about the gold streaming into the world, warming his blood, makes him melancholy. He doesn't think too hard, though. He doesn't delve deep enough to put his thoughts into coherent sentences. He is not fool enough for something that self-destructive. They're just fragments. Snippets. He lets them roll pass his eyelids like a steady steam train and views them in a decidedly detached manner. An image here, a memory there. Colours, music, smells, touches – all cumulate little by little to frame something far more superior, something far too much for an ordinary mind to compute. He thinks of Indian rugs with red, red patterns spun through the coarse wool. He thinks of brown sugar – he can feel it under his fingernails, melting against the hot blood of youth. He smells jasmine and salt, combined with an earthy scent – something like blood and flesh and tears spun intricately – intimately – together.
In his memories, everything is warm yellow.
They are all tiny fragments accumulated to stand for a person he can't quite remember, and yet at the same time remember all too well.
She is always in his thoughts, lingering in the corners and haunting the shadows. He feels her rather than knows her. A part of his blood cries out to her. He likes to remind himself that he knows her, remembers her. Reminders will beat against his skull till he has almost convinced himself that it is true.
Yet sometimes his own heart betrays him. Or rather, his mind betrays him. The heart in his chest remains steadfast – it is his mind, yes, his mind that emerges from the depths of the delusions he has drowned himself in with a booming, victorious voice. People call it Logic. He calls it The End.
Sometimes, he wonders if the person he thinks of at this time of day is a creature of his own invention. A phantom. An illusion. The oasis in the desert.
A mother. His heart is certain he can remember one. His heart is certain he still has one buried in the depths of his mind.
But his head. Alas, his poor, noble head.
Sometimes, he lets something akin to truth – untainted memory – float to the surface. And when it has surfaced, it floats buoyantly. He cannot push it beneath into oblivion. He cannot drown it. He tries, though, and with great, great effort.
The truth chuckles mirthlessly at him.
A cook – hands dusted with coarse, sickly sweet sugar. It sticks to the deep crevices in her palms. But she is not his mother.
A brother – splayed out on a rug that stunk of salt. Red patterns. Red patterns going on and on and on.
A father – speaking in languages that sit funny on his lips, as if he has sucked a lemon dry. He speaks quickly to the man smelling of rich spices, and as he does so, he sounds like a prophet.
A boy – he picks jasmine that grows wild beneath the pristine fences. He looks to take it to a woman in lace – his mother.
But she is out.
And since that moment, it has been understood that she will always be Out.
And despite it all, years later and countries later, the sun continues to shine with infinite intensity.
Takumi wonders how such a thing is even possible.
-x-x-x-
Her essays have always been nothing short of masterful.
She takes great pride in them, too; of course there are red markings across the pages, notes and scribbles where teachers have pointed out where she failed, but truth be told, they share a mutual understanding – the essays are masterful. What cannot be entirely expressed through words is streamed through greatness of mind. She loves to write, but it is no art to her. Her writing is in no way romanticised. She has neither time nor heart to flounder about in the superficiality of words – the selfishness, the bigotry, the pathetic moaning of the artistic writer trying to stamp their name on language as if it were a supermarket label. The true greatness is in the fire of the argument; the victory of organisation; the sweet simplicity of doing something well and taking pride in it. Her best work is submitted on the hour – page upon page of words and ideas and thoughts and beliefs and fire and truth and life.
But her very best work are the letters she writes home.
Her classmates think it odd.
It is their first year in the high school division (parents still weep at the school gates, praying their children will return home the same as they left it). Entries to run for President are being accepted from first years. Bentos are being packed with careful precision. Girls are shaking their pigtails loose. Boys stand taller, broader. Parents fear. Teachers sigh.
And Misaki Ayuzawa settles herself at her desk ten minutes before class begins, hunching over her books and pens and paper as the blonde boy on the opposite side of the room perches himself on the window sill, letting his shadow intercept the warm gold sunshine. He is just a silhouette – not entirely real. A shadow of a human.
She likes it better that way.
Because she likes to writes her letters in peace. Her classmates think it odd – she dictates the pen confidently for a first year, addressing the people she will go home to. She will seal it in an envelope, walk home, slip it into the letterbox, then greet her mother (out) and her sister (apathetic).
The following morning, when her mother is just returning home from her night shift in the hospital, she will find it in the mailbox.
And she will wonder tiredly at her eldest child with something akin to fear and love.
The letters contain nothing profound. Misaki is but fifteen – her world, her mother notes with relief, is still a succession of busy nothings. She writes of her classes, her teachers, her classmates. She gives no particular opinion of them, no great, lengthy descriptions. It is a report. A scientific record. Sometimes, she even records the time (down to the second) of particular mundane occurrences. She writes of lunches. She writes of colours. She writes of nouns, but never adjectives. She simply writes.
It is when her mother reads of a particular letter, the warm sunlight illuminating the page from the small kitchen, of Misaki's 'teacher introducing the topic of c.1500 East-Asian history at 11:34' that she weeps for Misaki. Weeps for Suzuna. Weeps for the husband gone.
She weeps for herself last – the woman who bore children with stale hearts.
Eventually, she recalls to herself doubtfully, wiping drying tears, Misaki will grow out of it.
(However, she cannot quite quell the fear of what she will grow into.)
-x-x-x-
She decides to run for president.
Deep down, she knows she has no right to win. She has seen her competition - she has known her new classmates for about six months now. It is not a long time, but it is enough. Beside her, Yukimura stands, waiting his turn to give his speech. Her rival, she supposes.
But he has nothing. He is weak, softly spoken, dispassionate and over-eager. There is no fire. There is no passion. There is no zeal. But a fire has begun to kindle within her lungs these past few months – she feels it grow with every deep breath and tingle against her insides. Passion has made itself known to her. Hatred is passion. Destructive strength is passion. She is zealous like a preacher, throwing words as if they were chunks of bread and droplets of water to the starved and deprived below. Yukimura has nothing. Nothing at all.
That is, except a heart.
And with that, Misaki notes briefly, humourlessly, he will always be one step ahead of her.
It is Yukimura's turn to speak to the school, and after that, her own. Those who have already spoken are seated below the stage, wide-eyed and hopeful. The boy to her left is disinterested. Yukimura, to her right, is nervous, and stumbles on his way to the microphone.
He has not opened his mouth, but even so, she knows she has won.
And so she wins.
And for the first time in five years, she doesn't write to tell her mother of it.
-x-x-x-
He remembers her from the speeches last year, and to be honest, he slept through half of them. Vaguely, he remembers her fist pounding against the table, waking him with a start each time.
She walks past quickly, steadily, eyes set on a destination no one else seems able to see. She pushes through the throngs of students congregated messily in the corridors, stepping on toes wherever the opportunity presents itself. She reminds him of a tornado.
He knows it makes no difference in the end – he's heard teachers and students alike whisper she'll become a doctor. A lawyer. A scientist. A politician. They whisper furiously as they foretell her devastating (and indisputably lonely) future.
He knows it makes no difference, but he can't help think she'll grow up to be a heroine.
And the sun continues to shine.
-x-x-x-
A filler, I guess. I was half-way through writing the first paragraph when an incredible idea hit me. So I finished this quickly so I could start on the next. Basically, it'll be something along the lines of this: Hinata. Usui. Misaki. Jealously. Doubt. Angst. Lust. Regret. Hurt. Power. And of course, Love.
It's going to be epic. Just so you know.
At any rate, I hope you enjoyed this….thing I posted.
x Schnook
p.s 10 points to the reviewer who picks up a lyric from a song. 'Cause I have 10 points to give. Justified.