POMEGRANATE
Lethe
"I saw Lethe; it was not dark water, nor slow. It was pale and rapid and steady."
-Lesbia, from Lesbia Brandon by A. C. Swinburne
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Long ago, when he was ten years old, Akira came home from school one day to find his father dead on the floor of his convenience store. He saw the pool of blood before anything else. He walked forward a few steps and saw the limp hand, then the rest of the body, all covered in blood. His father's dark head had been face down, ashamed. ...Even in death, ashamed.
The yakuza used to come with their guns and their knives and break things and threaten, young thugs with no respect. They would laugh.
Akira's father used to cry.
Finally, he couldn't take their dishonest methods anymore. One day, he stood up to them, refused to pay. But he was too weak. He could not face his orphaned son, turned his corpse's face to the floor...
*~*~*
"Here's that report you wanted, Councilman."
"Thank you." He turned and smiled as Mrs. Sakamoto placed the files on his desk, then went back to straightening his tie.
Another night spent on the couch in his office. He would go home in a minute to catch a quick shower, then back for more.
Sometimes it really was too much. Not the exhaustion, not the malnutrition, not the endless headaches and frustration.... but sometimes, it took too much effort to simply care. Sometimes the persona of Kiyosato Akira took over and he forgot that there was something behind the confident smiles and caring concern he showed the media.
In those times, all he had to do was think of blood drying on the vinyl floor below bright fluorescent lights. He remembered nights when he would stay awake reading only to overhear his father sobbing his dead mother's name. He remembered the quiet sadness of being oppressed, feeling useless... his father's woes.
But now... When he was alone and silent, he couldn't summon the past. All he saw when he closed his eyes was her.
*~*~*
"Wow, Nichi, that was a good match." The boy was breathing hard, bruised in several places. "You've never beaten me that badly before."
A cheerful smirk in a face that had been all-too-somber recently. "Thanks." He had been thinking about his sister, and how she was ignoring him these days. Her eyes would glaze over more often than not when he talked to her, probably thinking of him. It gave an extra power to Enishi's strikes if he were angry when he was fighting.
"Oh, look, there's that girl again. The one from the other dojo."
Ponytailed silhouette in the doorway. Kaoru. She stiffened when she saw them looking at her.
"Heh. A girl trying to do kendo..." Katou kept yammering, but Enishi wasn't listening. Something about that girl... He had never properly met her, but he had seen her lots of times and knew of her. She came to watch the matches, even though her dojo never wound up competing with theirs. She always watched so intently, was so involved in the moves so that you could sense her watching, sense her aura jump at every strike, even in a crowd...
Without quite realizing it, Enishi found himself walking toward her, Katou following, still talking. "You practice kendo, don't you?"
Her eyes were like... the ocean... "Yeah. Kamiya Kasshin Ryu, the sword that protects." She was a good six inches shorter than him, but she spoke with pride and looked him straight in the eye. She was beautiful.
"Would you like to spar sometime?"
It was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. The smile that had been in her eyes now appeared on her whole face, her whole body, and lit up everything. Enishi was bathed in her sunlight. "Any time. My name's Kamiya Kaoru, by the way."
A beautiful name; it suited her perfectly. A moment later, he remembered to give a response. "I'm Nichi. That is... Yukishiro Enishi, but no one calls me that."
"It's nice to meet you... Nichi..."
*~*~*
"Why don't you go to bed, Enishi?"
She spoke from the kitchen table, where she was silently doing her English homework. She always stayed up an extra hour to work on it while he played his game system or read or went to sleep. But tonight he was just sitting there, staring at nothing in the living room.
"What is it that attracts people, Tomoe? I always thought you had to have something in common, or have something to gain from being together..."
She looked at him, her mind a few miles away. Perhaps... it's simply something you want... something you want that you can't have...
"I don't even understand her," Enishi mumbled. "She's so pleasant... all the time... She never lets anything get her down. And... she's so... nice."
Tomoe returned her attention to her brother and almost smiled. She always felt contented when his life was going well. "Are you going to ask her to your prom?"
A shy smile, a blush. "...Yeah."
*~*~*
She liked to watch him. As long as he wasn't focusing those soulful eyes on her, she could relax. She had never before seen anyone with as much positive energy as her employer. She marveled at the way people responded to him, always eager to help him with his work, eager just to help him.
Sometimes... she forgot that it was impolite to stare, and she could almost... lose herself... in watching him.
Those were the best times.
But then her father's voice would catch her.
***"Tomoe!"
Cranky. Not to be argued with.
"Always, always be a demure young lady. Be someone your mother can be proud of."
Mother, who sits all day humming and rocking, who speaks to birds and screams sometimes...
"Yes, father."***
And she would go back to her work - typing, filing. But he didn't go away - Kiyosato-san didn't go away. His presence was there even if she couldn't see him, even if he was silent, listening to what someone else had to say. And sometimes she could tell he was looking at her and she wanted to tell him not to waste his smiles, not to waste his eyes on her, someone who couldn't look up with the same unconditional kindness and smile back.
*~*~*
"Miss Yukishiro, there's going to be an informal meeting at my house tonight to discuss the new legislation, and we need someone to take notes." He was looking at her closely, trying to judge her reaction from the emotionless depths of her gray eyes. "You don't have to... I don't want you to feel pressured, but I would like it if you would come. It would last many hours, probably past midnight. I understand you have other obligations... English courses, I hear."
"I could skip them for a night," she spoke at last. She seemed troubled, looking for words... just a hunch, though; no shift in her mouth, no crease in her brow to disclose her inner thoughts. "If it would help you, Kiyosato-san..."
She would come. Just a minor thing - he had been existing on just seeing her in the office, no words but "good morning," "good evening," "nice to see you today." But knowing that she would come... extra hours of her presence. Being able to look up and see a goddess in the room, sitting silent, an otherworldly being, a living poem, come from heaven with a notebook and a pen. "Thank you very much, Miss Yukishiro. You can't imagine what this means to me." Stock politician words, but he tried to look into her eyes to show that they were real.
Because at the same time she distracted him, she also urged him on. He could look at her and see a tiny world beyond politics and suffering, the haven of silence and serenity that clung to her like atmosphere around the earth, the aura of remoteness that was loneliness... He could look and want to join her but all the same realize, not yet. He still had work to do.
"My secretary will give you directions. I hope to see you tonight... but understand if you can't come."
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Author's Notes:
All right, two more reviews! Guess I should, like, reply.
Shuro: It gave me a lot of trouble when I first wrote it, hence the long period of no writing. Thing seem to be falling in to place in my head right now, though. Go figure.
Devil: Each chapter will be fairly short, but hopefully all of them together will present a whole story. Most of them should be longer than Chapter 2, though.
Istoria: :}
Shuro again: Yeah, much as I appreciate main characters, main storylines... It's good to delve into the other stuff, too.
Don't know why I'm doing this, probably cursing myself. *deep breath* Proposed outline:
-Descent into the Underworld
-The Styx, river of the eternally binding oath
-The Lethe, river of forgetfulness
-The Acheron, river of woe
-The Phlegethon, river of fire
-The Cocytus, river of wailing
-Elysian Fields
Oh, and if you want to see a wallpaper I made for this story... It took entirely too much time; I just really like fooling around on Photoshop... Go to .