THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY by Moon71

Summary: While walking in the park one evening, Eiri has a fateful encounter. (Well, we all know that, but this is from his point of view!)

Disclaimer (this chapter): Just to make it clear, I do not own Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird!

Chapter 2: Eiri walks away and thinks that's the end of that… but retribution comes in many strange forms…

Note: I know I've said this before, but I really was overwhelmed by the response this story has received. It's a bit of an odd one, so I'm reassured that people are enjoying it! I'm only here to entertain you! Thank you to EVERYONE who was kind enough to leave such supportive comments! I will not hold things up here, but will make a few "responses" after this chapter!


I managed to get as far as the other end of the path before the next memory flash broke over my brain, flooding it with the sunlight and the sweet scents of a summer afternoon. It was so overpowering it stopped me in my tracks, giving me no time to slam closed the door from which it had sprung.

I was there. I was in the park with Yuki, sitting beneath a tree. I could hear him, as clearly as if he was standing next to me. I could see him smiling that enigmatic smile which had always given me a shiver of pleasure…

Or had it really been pleasure? Hadn't it been something a little more complex? Longing, perhaps, mixed with doubt? That smile made him seem so clever, but also so remote. What had made him smile just then? What had we been reading together?

'"Your father's right… mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy... they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mocking bird."'

Oh yes. To Kill A Mocking Bird. It was a standard enough text for him to have picked, an American classic, always popular with children the age I had been. But what had he said? What had he asked me?

"Do you agree with that, Eiri-kun?"

"Oh, yes, Sensei! I would think it was terribly cruel to kill something as innocent as a song bird!"

There. There was the smile. As if I was utterly naïve, as if I knew nothing and was to be pitied because of it.

"I sometimes wonder," I hear him say, "if innocence isn't the greatest sin of all."

I hadn't understood then. But I understand now. I was the one being mocked.

The strangest thing that happened in the next moment was not that I had caught myself referring to the experiences of Uesugi Eiri as mine, instead of his, but the fact that I did not need to struggle to shut the memory out. My mind drifted away from it all by itself.

Back to the song-bird.

Had I just committed the sin the Atticus Finch had admonished his children about? My attack had been unprovoked and – it could be argued – unjustified. The kid hadn't asked for my opinion and if he liked to sing, or to write soppy songs, what harm was he doing to me?

Damn it – why did he have to start crying? It was only a bloody joke.

Well – no, all right, it hadn't been a joke. It had been an insult, fully intended to wound. To clip the songbird's wings and send him plunging from the sky.

Stop that. Stop that idiotic songbird crap right now. He's not a pretty little canary in a cage; he's just some damned brat who fancies himself the next Sakuma Ryuichi. As soon as your back was turned he probably made some obscene gesture and dismissed you as someone too old and uncool to "tune into his wavelength", or however the hell the street slang goes these days…

But if that was so, why had he started crying?

Maybe you imagined it.

I thought for a moment. No – no, I hadn't imagined it. I had heard him weeping, quietly but distinctly. And the tone of his voice when he had shouted after me was filled with anguish, not indignation. The little fool was overreacting – it wasn't something to cry over. What a baby.

Now that was odd – as I had replayed the memory in my head, just to be sure, I had felt a sharp pain in my chest. Was I about to have a heart attack? That would be the most exquisite irony – to collapse in agony in the park in the middle of the night, my only hope of salvation some teenaged brat whose nose I had just put severely out of joint. Perhaps he would come to my rescue… or perhaps he would give me a good kicking and steal my wallet before he waltzed on by.

Or perhaps he would just stay where he was all night… crying.

There. There was the pain again. It came whenever I thought of him crying! Could I seriously, seriously be experiencing a pang of regret?

Maybe the kid was younger than I thought after all. Or maybe the world had just been unnecessarily kind to him up until tonight. If so, then I had done him a favour, as well as all the people whose lives would be ruined by his malevolent naïveté.

"The brilliant lights, glaring one way… illuminate me as I freeze…

It was strange how the words of his song lingered in my head – I had only glanced at the damn paper, and I was hardly in a possession of a photographic memory. At any rate, he'd damn well freeze if he didn't pick his arse up from the concrete and go home.

I wondered if I should go back and see if he was all right. You could never tell with these sensitive types – he might be back there banging his head against the concrete. Or he might have gone off to drown himself in the fountain.

The idea was utterly ridiculous but thanks to my treacherous writer's brain, I could not help wondering what would happen if I did go and check. Would he still be there? Would he still be crying? Would he leap for my throat or kick me in the nuts or just tell me to go fuck myself with my own critique? Or would he… just possibly… be pleased to see me?

I couldn't help it. In my mind I was already retracing my steps. He was there, of course – if he wasn't, the story would end on a short, bitter note. Meaningful, but depressing and perhaps a little trite. "Listen, kid," I would say, "no hard feelings, okay? Get on home before you catch cold."

That wasn't a very satisfying ending either. Better for him to challenge me, to demand to know what was so awful about his lyrics. And how would I respond?

The brilliant lights, glaring one way… illuminate me as I freeze…

Actually the imagery wasn't all that bad. It recalled a sense I had had on some of my more subdued nightly wanderings, passing the lighted windows of house after house, and… just for a moment… envying the occupants of those bright rooms, as if I was excluded from such luxury, as if I had no home to go to and no-one to welcome me when I got there… Such musings meant nothing, of course – they were just one more idea thrown up by my creative brain – but there was a terrible loneliness in such thoughts, just as there was in those words.

Lonely words from a lonely boy? Crap. More like sentimental drivel from a hormonal, lovelorn adolescent.

I awake and you are there. A shimmering vision, a faint silhouette…

Amazing; I remembered it all, almost as if I'd written it myself. It might have been written about the very moment of our meeting… as if the boy had been waiting for me… expecting me…

Complete hogwash, of course. But I couldn't help but wonder who he was thinking of when he wrote it. Who did he long to find beside him when he woke? Some spotty flat-chested girl he had the hots for? Somehow that clashed with my scenario, and I dismissed it. Better to go back to my original assessment. He wasn't in love, but he wanted to be.

That was probably crap too. He probably just saw himself as a great songwriter and thought the words sounded romantic. But that didn't fit my scenario either, and nor did his being a total, twenty-four carat moron, so I decided he would be embarrassed that I had caught him blubbing like a girl and would blush when I offered him my handkerchief. (Well what did you expect? That I'd wipe his tears away myself? Give me some credit! I'm Yuki Eiri, not Barbara Cartland!)

Yes, I liked the idea of him blushing, just a little.

I would wait until he'd wiped his face and then I would turn to go. But he would call me back, demanding to know what right I had to criticise his lyrics. So I'd tell him.

"What? You mean you really are Yuki Eiri? The Yuki Eiri?"

No. I didn't like that. It was too much like the dimwit girls who made feeble attempts to act nonchalant around me, pretending they didn't know who I was when they had quite obviously gone out of their way to pick a table close to mine or bump into me in the supermarket.

Besides, he was a boy, and my fan-base was predominately, if not exclusively, female. The scenario just wouldn't work.

We might argue for a bit (I could supply the dialogue later) – and finally, when he looked utterly stricken, or because the debate had unexpectedly caught my imagination, or because I was bored by the prospect of a night at home alone, (I'd choose which one later) I would suggest we go for a cup of coffee somewhere (or a drink? No; too suggestive, and besides, I hadn't decided how old he was.)

What next. I would look at his crap lyrics and help make them… not quite so crap. He would try to express how he was feeling and I would tell him that pouring out his heart into a song wasn't enough – it had to be well written and properly structured. He had to learn when despite the fact two words technically meant the same thing, one might be a better choice than the other.

Of course he would be pathetically grateful for my input. Perhaps, to test drive our collaboration, he would sing the lyrics to me. Sing to me, Songbird, I would say, and, not knowing whether I was mocking him or flirting with him, but unable to resist me, he would sing.

Well? So what if I cast myself as the brooding, enigmatic anti-hero? It's the role all of my readers have cast me in, certain beyond all reason that I base such characters upon myself. And this was, after all, supposed to be a Yuki Eiri novel.

At any rate, because this was a Yuki Eiri novel, as soon as the boy had finished I would wish him well and wander off into the night. He would long to call me back, to ask for us to be friends; but wouldn't have the courage and the scene would end with him realising that his song was perfect, but he was now more lonely than ever, and life, far from being the idyll he had fantasised about, was a real bitch.

The End.

What a load of total, complete and utter crap. I should remember to check my temperature when I got home because I was beginning to wonder if I was in the early stages of encephalitis.

Now in a towering temper and with a headache to match, I strode out of the park and headed for home.

TBC: Eiri goes home… but his new muse goes with him…


NOTE
S: For the purpose of the smooth flow of the story I am slightly misquoting To Kill a Mocking Bird. This is the correct quote in full:

"When he gave us our air-rifles Atticus wouldn't teach us to shoot. Uncle Jack instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Atticus wasn't interested in guns. Atticus said to Jem, "I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever hear Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. "You're father's right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mocking bird."'

I don't know why this quote popped into my head as I was writing this, but once it did, I thought it rather appropriate to Eiri's behaviour not only in my story but in the early stages of the Gravitation story itself.

A few responses: Eiri-chick – You noted you didn't expect the story to continue, and I don't blame you! When I came up with this, I was set on ending it where Chapter 1 ends, and leaving the rest to history, as it were. Then the idea of Eiri the writer thinking up alternative scenarios appeared in my brain, and the whole thing just ran away. I would be interested to know what people think – does it get too far fetched?!

And Overskill – will reply properly, but wanted to comment here about what you say about the spelling of the two Yuki names. That is so interesting – sadly I am ignorant of the intricacies of kanji (would it alter the pronunciation – say for example the difference between John and Jean? Or would one be a diminutive or a derivative of the other? Just curious!) Whatever the truth, the psychology of it is fascinating – far more so, for me, than if he had simply taken Kitazawa's name exactly.

Oh and that typo – oh sh-t! How many times did I proofread that? Not as many as I should have done, obviously!!