- THE WORDSMITH'S FLOWER -
Hello! This is the third instalment of a story I'm writing at request of a idea is simple: people change all the time, but we only understand this at an intellectual level. How will two changing young women come to terms with each other emotionally?
On one hand we have the ever-popular Sei, who has finally more or less made peace with herself and her turbulent identity. Things are going swimmingly, actually - her internship might be unpaid, but it's with a big publishing company and it's going to result in her very first novel. But squaring off against her turbulent feelings is a long-haired beauty, with haunting, kind eyes, with a radical, innocent sensuality that she is utterly unprepared for. Fukuzawa Yumi, Rosa Chinensis - you've never seen Yumi like this before. Nor has Sei.
Sei has a novel to do. It's time to get writing.
- Third Draft -
- A Story is a Fantasy -
She couldn't sleep.
The blonde woman rubbed her sore eyes blearily, sighing as she scratched her nose in the pure, silent, tranquil darkness. The moon was faintly luminous behind her window's curtain, and her blankets lay scattered about her. She swiped up her mobile and rubbed the screen, squinting and recoiling slightly at the sudden burst of light. As her aching retina slowly adjusted, she made out the glaring digital display:
2:24 AM.
She groaned, clenching shut her eyelids and squeezing out some teary residue. "Shit."
She hadn't slept well for the past three evenings.
Sei wasn't one to let people, especially girls and women, occupy her mind for long. Even Shiori hadn't left as lasting a scar on her as her peers thought. Just because she thought it was better for them not to meet again, didn't mean that she regretted everything that had passed. On the contrary; Shiori would remain for her an angel to remember wistfully forever. And with Shizuka, it had been easier. Shizuka was just like her: whimsical but loyal. Her whimsicality protected her against heartbreak by anyone she loved, just like Sei.
But Yumi was anything but whimsical. Yet her loyalty made her radiant, far more radiant than her long brown hair or kissable lips ever could dream of doing. No, Yumi was pretty, to be sure, but it was her inner qualities that gave that critical shine to her outer attractiveness, elevating her above many other girls who had fuller lips or better eyelashes or curvier figures.
It was the same with her book. Sei knew that she could have the nicest-looking cover or the most flowery Victorian language (it was certainly a possibility: this was going to be a book with English themes, after all), but it would lack life and magic without that spark of determination and eloquence that poured a writer's entire life into the pages of a single tome.
"Some inspiration," muttered the former White Rose, rubbing her short hair and running her hand through her mop's tresses. "For once-happy memories to grow so uncertain and painful."
She fumbled away her blanket, and pressed the "off" button on her air conditioner's remote. She rubbed her bare shoulder, sighing and blissfully unaware of her dishevelled beauty. She massaged the ridge of her nose, mulling over the haunting face of Rosa Chinensis. Then she heaved herself off the bed and pulled on some shorts and a t-shirt.
In some ways, Yumi's kind but sharp eyes were even more striking than Sachiko's gaze of cool indifference.
She needed to write - to gather that courage to pen all her being on paper and share it with anyone who will care to read... she never imagined this could have happened to her, the student who denied writing Forest of Thorns and didn't even keep a diary. Sei wobbled over to her desk and turned on the desk lamp. Blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light, she opened her notebook (titled "Dreaming Snow"), spinning her Kawecosports pen in her hand as she flipped to where she had stopped last time. Everything in her notebook was a mere sketch, an uncertain fantasy of what could be on the final canvas of her story.
Knock, knock.
"Yo. Come in."
A young lady with long but orderly black hair slowly opened the door, peeking within. She squinted at Sei's hunched back, adjusting her spectacles. Sei's housemate was dressed in a set of teacup-patterned pyjamas. "Can't sleep?" she wondered aloud, walking over. She set down a steaming mug on Sei's coffee-stained coaster. "Have some tea for a change."
Sei nodded, not turning around. "Not with this huge project, Kei-babe. It could make or break my entry into the fiction market."
Kei rolled her eyes, peeking over Sei's shoulder onto her notebook. "Which fiction market? As far as I know, you haven't even decided on the genre you're writing."
Sei put her pen to her lips, shaking her head. "That's where you've got it wrong. I have got something."
Kei looked genuinely impressed. "I take back what I said, then. What have you decided on?"
"It's going to be something like... dark fantasy."
Kei blinked, looking at Sei as if the latter had gone slightly mad. "Well, that's bizarre. That really doesn't fit you, I'm sorry to say. Maybe I'm wrong."
"That's the point. My heart is feeling out of whack, Kei. And I'm not a good writer - I can't mask what I'm feeling in the present moment to write something I'm not feeling. So my first novel has to at least be honest and be just as out of whack as I'm feeling. It's the only way... my only chance... to make this novel a piece of work that I won't regret, whether or not it sells."
"Fair enough... but why dark fantasy?" muttered Kei, eyebrow raised. "That's... a peculiar choice for you. I thought you were going to settle for something like romance, or at most a crime mystery." Kei's glasses shone. "You know, something like that novel Forest of Thorns. It could have served as inspiration."
Sei glanced up at Kei, grimacing. "Anything but that one," she said calmly, and in that brief denial was the admission that she trusted Kei with her deepest vulnerabilities - quite an achievement for a housemate who had shacked up with her for just over a year. "Forest of Thorns exploited a tragic mystery and the lurid details of a girl's death by drug overdose. My fiasco with Shiori was... much more embarrassing and childish. Nothing more than the inevitable outcome of a spoilt girl's tantrum against the world."
"Then, I ask you again, dear Sei: why dark fantasy?"
"Why, you say," murmured Sei, tapping her notebook page with a finger as Yumi's face forced itself past her shut eyelids. "It's a coping mechanism for me, in a sense." Those strong, shy (but curiously fearless) brown eyes. And that long brown hair: so majestic, totally-not-like-Sachiko's, so kissable -
"Wha - " Sei jerked up from her delusions - for those images, to her horror, were precisely delusions - prompting Kei to jump.
"Geez, Sei, don't scare me like that! I'm not going to disturb you. I'll leave you to your crazy thoughts." Kei squeezed the writer's shoulder and slipped away, letting a stunned Sei rub her forehead in chagrin. "Don't push yourself too hard. It's too early for you to become a female Edgar Allen Poe."
Sei didn't reply as Kei quietly shut the door. Had Yumi penetrated into her consciousness so thoroughly that her haunting smile (and frown) were actually part of her? She once loved to tease Rosa Chinensis. Now, it is as if Yumi's very glance, her very presence, was torturing and mocking her.
Karma was, excluding Eriko, truly the bitchiest of bitchy bitches.
Yes, this was why she would write something darker. She wanted to write about how it was possible to love a monster. Not that Yumi was a monster, of course, but these feelings between them were certainly monstrous, primeval, terrifying... and this was Sei's chance to immortalise them. Yes, Yumi the dark princess who had fallen from the light, one hand clasping Sei's waist, the other, her throat. And from behind, the monster stares up and nibbles her flushed neck, before whispering words that will break her in a blushing ear -
Sei let out a quiet grunt, shivering as she lowered her head against her desk. She felt so helpless and awkward, but was glad that Yumi wasn't around.
Her eyes and fists were clenched tightly. What the hell was happening to her?
The wordsmith would write tirelessly into the night. Now she wrote feverishly into the early morning, and it was 6:32am by the time her eyes were watering with exhaustion once again. She crawled back into bed by 8:53am, and wouldn't get up until lunchtime when Kei had come back from classes and kicked her out of her duvet and blankets.
Mos Burger. Some random branch in Tokyo
Youko shifted her eyes across the paper, taking a sip of soda from her straw. "Your use of English is getting pretty good. It's smooth, it's natural, and most of all it didn't look like you were trying too hard. But I'm not supposed to be a critic, remember?"
"Come one. You're all I have," begged Sei. She looked embarrassed, and her burger and fries were largely untouched. "Well, there's the girls in my course, but I haven't been speaking much to them lately."
"I can tell," murmured Youko. "You're growing more interested in Yumi by the day. She's the one who can help you with a breakthrough. And I'll give you this: it's showing in your manuscript."
"Really?" asked Sei eagerly, encouraged to no small degree.
"Yeah." Youko looked up at Sei, and for once, she looked uncomfortable. "Listen..." Sei raised an eyebrow as Youko suddenly blushed. "I hope you're not trying to be Japan's first EL James. Not that we need novelists of her calibre."
"What? Of course not. This is nothing like that bible for abusive stalkers," cried Sei indignantly. "Are you even reading what I'm writing? How does any of my stuff resemble mommy porn?"
"Look, okay, maybe that was a bad comparison. However, say what you like about EL James, but her novels have plenty of sex in them. And you have... what... at least twenty scenes of dealings with demonic lovers? It would read like some lecher's ultimate fantasy were it not for a rather compelling story and rationale behind the orphan's love for her succubi captor." Youko began to mutter. "It's hard for me not to blush. This stuff would get anyone hot under the collar."
Sei's eyes narrowed. "You're supposed to appreciate those characters from a metaphorical angle. The story's not supposed to feel real. Not even the demoness. Only the protagonist, Yvonne, is real, and I'm trying to make the love she feels uncertain too. In my world, succubi come to women in dreams. Yvonne isn't even sure whether their affection is an illusion the demoness conjures to dupe her. And I'm trying to invoke a lot of medieval English fears superstitions about nightly visitations... you know, witches and the like. How the horrors of the night seduce their victims. There is some literary legitimacy to all the stuff I'm writing. "
"Sure. Gothic is a decent enough genre. But my point is that your metaphors, allusions, whatever - ooze sex. It's plastered on pretty much every chapter, if not every other page."
Sei grimaced. "I can't help it. For some reason, that's all I'm able to write. Aside from a somewhat coherent plot, that is. And this is just a draft. I've got quite a few more chapters to go."
"It's not bad," admitted Youko. "I'm just wondering where all this newfound... creative tension comes from."
Sei grunted, lifting the straw of her soft drink to her lips. Yes, perhaps Yumi was honest when she said she couldn't help Sei with the actual writing. But the emotions stirred within the wordsmith were indeed all that she needed to lose herself in a world of her own creativity and eloquence. Yes, this was what Dreaming Snow would be about: a visceral, ferocious tale of destructive love between a human girl and a dark seductress of the night. The settings were interchangeable, languid, intentionally foggy and half-false - there was passionate, eloquent lovemaking across surreal, hazy dreamscapes of infernal crevices and craggy mountain peaks, mutual, warm, wet cunnilingus in the confines of the succubus's dungeons, seemingly pointless orgies with deformed demonesses sandwiching quivering mortal flesh -
"Bloody hell. Should I really be reading this in public?" Youko quietly set Sei's manuscript back on the table. She had to admit, Sei had a knack for writing good sex. She never thought the former White Rose had it in her to write such provocative, titillating, and frankly slightly disturbing gothic romance. This was the gothic and romantic tradition and all its heirs - Shelley, Byron, Stoker, Poe, Lovecraft - taken to their twisted, logical extremes. Honestly: where had Sei learned to write like this? "Unimaginable intimacy with the horrors of the night, melting in the most alluring darkness. Only you, Sei - only you. I should have expected a draft of this standard from you."
"Uh... thanks, I guess?"
"Craving... makes fantasies reality, huh...?" murmured Youko, eyes shining.
"Huh?" replied Sei warily. Somehow, she could sense what Youko meant, and she didn't like the foreboding implications.
"Nothing," said Youko quietly. She stood up to leave the diner, looking sharply down at Sei, who looked almost intimidated.
"I hope you'll have Yumi-chan over again soon."
Sei groaned as Youko departed. So that was what it was all about. She stared down at her half-eaten fish burger and cold french fries. It was difficult to eat such junk when all you could think of was eating - no wait: entertaining - Rosa Chinensis.
More fireworks between us then, I guess, she thought glumly to herself, even as butterflies made her stomach turn.
This was the second week, and the second day, Yumi was due to visit. The Red Rose had pressed the doorbell, and Sei was quick to answer. The woman and the girl stared at each other, for several moments before the latter spoke up first. "Hey," said Yumi, her demeanour almost careless and bored as she stepped beyond Sei's threshold. Sei glanced back, gazing at Yumi's long brown tresses trailing behind her. "I'm going to take off my shoes, okay?"
Day two? Day three? Whatever. I've lost track of her visits. "Sure," acknowledged Sei, reaching out with her hands. "Can I take your jacket?" she asked, gesturing at the black Lillian school coat she used to wear all the time.
Yumi glanced up at Sei. A certain kind of light was swimming in her eyes. "It's okay. Thanks, Sei-san," she said softly.
Sei lowered her hands. "It's cool," she lied, as Yumi began to walk up the stairs to her room.
"How goes your progress?" asked Yumi, when they had both settled down. She sat back down on Sei's bed, her pleated skirt draping around her legs.
"Not too bad," said Sei, sitting down on her swivel chair and looking fondly at the grown girl. "I gotta admit, I had to think about you a lot so I could use you as a model in my novel."
Rosa Chinensis smiled (the first smile she had given Sei all day), and Sei felt relieved. "I showed a draft to Youko. She said it wasn't too bad," she said, encouraged.
"Well, then," responded Rosa Chinensis, raising an eyebrow expectantly. "Show me the draft too," she requested, extending her arm and an open hand.
"What?" blurted Sei, caught off-guard.
"If I'm going to be a sustainable source of inspiration, I need to know what you're writing so I can steer you on the right path," declared Yumi. She gestured with her hand again. "Come on, show me the draft."
Suddenly, Sei realized she had spoken prematurely. She had made a horrible mistake.
"Um. Show you my draft. To you."
About a woman modelled after you being seduced by the darkest of the dark and the horrors of night. It's going to look so fucking obvious, admitted the wordsmith to herself desperately. Oh, how the truth hurt.
You're the fantasy, Rosa Chinensis. You're the fantasy that inspires me. You're the fantasy I've imprisoned in my forest of thorns, and stripped naked to have the darkness make love to you. Holy shit, I hope I didn't say that out loud.
Sei stared at Yumi, openly paralyzed. And to her utter bewilderment, and shame, she felt her cheeks beginning to redden.
She? Blushing?
Before Yumi?
Yumi's brown eyes glimmered, as if she knew. As if Sei was naked. "Oh dear, Sei-san," she whispered, flicking back her long brown hair, with the air of a chess champion checkmating a hapless challenger.
"We'll get nowhere if I can't get to know your... fantasy. Intimately. Why the discomfort? A story is but your fantasy, after all. Inked on paper, and shared with me."
NEXT DRAFT: THE DARK AND TROUBLED STORY OF DREAMING SNOW...