- THE WORDSMITH'S FLOWER -
Hello and welcome back to The Wordsmith's Flower, a Yumi x Sei story written on request by a kind reader. The stakes of intimacy and emotions are upped as the incumbent Rosa Chinensis, third-year Fukuzawa Yumi, challenges Sei, a Gigantea alumni of Lillian, to show her the first draft of her novel, Dreaming Snow. As unresolved feelings and poignant memories bubble to the surface between the two young women, Sei the writer must face up to the young lady before her - to show her the writing she is so devoted to.
Secrets about to be confessed, and tensions will soon bubble to the surface, like an inflamed wound deepened, not healed, by time.
What is Yumi thinking? How will Sei grapple with the overwhelming tensions in their new relationship?
And what will Rosa Chinensis do when she finally encounters the famed storytelling of the erstwhile White Rose?
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy my new chapter. :)
- Fourth Draft -
- Dreaming Snow -
Lily Mountain Council Mansion
Having loosened her necktie, Yumi fingered her way carefully and gingerly through the tea-and-coffee-stained pages. "So this is her draft," she mused quietly, taking a sip of Earl Grey. Ever since she had ascended to Sachiko's position, she found herself unconsciously adopting some of the mannerisms that she herself never dared to think she'd do? The delicate, queenly sips from the cup's rim, the careful, subtle stares, even the way she held her hands together. Now she held the large pile of paper sheets in her arms, their scribbles dappled by the after-school sun's orange sunlight. It was 4:52pm, and not even Shimako or Yoshino had stayed behind with her in the Council Mansion. It was getting much too late, but Yumi's afternoon had only started.
She was about to share Sei's secret.
The story was simple enough. An encounter with a monster, a demoness of the night, was surreal enough to make anyone question their sanity or their soundness of mind. This dance between dream and reality, between love and hate, memory and letting go, was Sei's inspiration for the draft in its present form. Yumi couldn't help feeling that the chiaroscuro of opposing abstracts was exactly what lurked behind her awkward relationship with Sei. It was like a wedge jamming the emotions that were about to burst forth between them.
Rosa Chinensis and Satou Sei couldn't dance around each other forever. Perhaps this novel wouldn't just land Sei a name in the publishing world. It would also hopefully dispel their muddled inauthenticity, and help them recover their honesty towards one another.
Yumi began to read. She turned to the page of the first chapter and read out aloud: "Is love real? Was her touch true, or the caress of a wishful thought?"
She stared at the eloquent text being shoved before her widening eyes. This was it. She was really diving into the deepest, darkest, most intimate corners of Sei's mind. And it was a lush world.
Regent's Park is a veneer of civilization and culture imposed on rolling wilds. Everything here, from its memorials to the War and benches to the tenderly sculpted walkways and even the shape of its lake, is man-made illusion posing as nature. Just as emotions are all but illusions, like the muses and demons that come in those lonely dreams to touch and hold you.
"England," murmured Yumi. She felt her heart gathering pace as she devoured the text. The artist shivered as she turned her back on the waddling ducks, wrapping her overcoat tighter around herself. Her boot turned, pressing into the soil unassumingly towards home. Tonight, as on many nights for the past year, she would be conquered.
"Conquest." How typical of Sei-san, thought Yumi to herself pensively. Conquest was Sei's watchword, she knew, and it was a bitter idea. Sei had conquered her long ago, and perhaps Yumi had expected the conqueror to enjoy her spoils. But she never did, and instead simply left her conquest to fend for herself, when the latter had come to depend on her.
Yumi pursed her lips. She was genuinely happy for Sei when the former White Rose graduated. But when she fretted in panic about how she would cope without Sei's care and guidance, she had meant it deeply and sincerely. Even today, as the celebrated Red Rose, the scar of abandonment had not quite healed.
Yes, that was it, realized Yumi. This was why this story meant so much to her personally. To them both.
She continued to read, immersed in the words of her mentor.
The artist rented a one-bedroom flat across Baker Street - no mean feat given her calling as an artist. Having an apartment in the area meant that she was as successful a surrealist as one could realistically expect. Perhaps her reveries at the park, and in her work, had spilled over into more intimate moments, like the nights when she slept with no one, for she had no boyfriend or husband. But her sweating, writhing, alight form did not toss and turn amongst the bedsheets alone. That was the point.
It would only be twelve o'clock. The onset of the witching hour would bring a voice ragged, almost husky, but light and high enough to indicate her femininity. And it would have been an somewhat childish pitch, had it not been punctured by the frequent slurring that so enthralled the artist.
At those quiet but smouldering invitations by the raven-haired woman from the nightmarish dreamscape, the red-tressed artist felt her heart haunted and uneasy, like angry waves dashed against rocks shaped into jagged mountains, on which the daimon carved and cleaved away at trembling flesh, searing her into sensual servility with the promise of more, more, more.
Where the fires and desires are one.
Yumi heard herself sighing hoarsely, but she was too engrossed in the story to notice or care. Her teacup and Earl Grey stood to one side, still half-full but already forgotten.
Her nights with this unearthly visitor were punctuated with sharp gasps - be they on her bed or high above some rocky hill in a realm unknown to the world of daylight, she neither knew nor cared. They shared gasps of excited surprise and grateful climax, pleased and pleasured to perfection. Across those forbidden, taboo hells that opened into sinister, dank dungeons were naked bodies, hanging, rolling, making lust and birthing yearning.
The artist never knew the daimon's name. All that she knew when the other held her, was that she could not and did not want to extract herself from these dreams, more surreal than any painting she could ever sell.
"What is this?" whispered Rosa Chinensis to herself. "Is this your sensuality, but on paper?" She pressed her thighs closer together, and she gasped briefly.
The daimon continued to take her on odysseys. The artist had already forgotten when her journeys across those yawning, infernal crevices had begun. Again and again it happened, and the artist no longer cared why or how or how often she touched her. She just wanted to return her passionate embrace and scream her fiery, delighted appreciation.
Feeling herself stirring, she readjusted herself on the chair, staring at the erotic words in the manuscript.
But tonight would be different, as the naked artist reclined in her otherworldly lover's arms, watching murky whirlpools and flakes of snow that sprinkled across the amorphous wastelands around them. The rumbling of ethereal volcanoes could be heard in the blurry distance.
The story continued, and she couldn't put it down.
For the very first time, the succubus spoke, kissing the artist's warm forehead. The artist stirred, surprised by the siren purr. "I have to leave your dreams now." The artist could not believe it. What was this, so sudden and hurtful? How could such a (far from) divine lover wound with such an abrupt, hasty declaration?
"Too much, too many times, and you will lose everything. I've satiated myself with you, but if I become greedy, you will suffer: perhaps even die." The daimon's eyes were suddenly lonely; no more did they shine with mischievous lust and the confidence of a demonic seductress. The artist could see her for who she was - a sad night-creature who consumed bodies amidst melded dreamscapes of lover and beloved. But Lilith loved this woman, and had no appetite to devour her.
What a bizarre, strange twist this was. Yumi suddenly giggled shyly to herself. Was Sei's publishing firm really going to accept such an outlandish novel?
"Don't go," pleaded the artist. "Only you have loved me amidst the languid nights and uncertain hours of the moon." She clutched her Other in desperation. "If you wish to consume me entirely, I'd consider it a life well-lived and a death well-chosen." The daimon had never offered her tongue to speak, only to please. But now she had uttered something at last, and they were words of sad farewell that broke the artist's heart. "At least tell me your name. We've had each other for so many times, for so long, and I don't even know what to call you in our moments of passion."
The daimon shook her head. "If you know or speak a hellish monster's name, you will be cursed."
The artist wept and swore bitterly in protest as the daimon reluctantly released her shaking body. And with the departure of her gentle, scorching touch, also went her visions of the thundering, rolling, crackling circles of the Underworld.
She had seduced her and loved her for such a long time. Now she was leaving her.
It wasn't fair.
Yumi suddenly felt her eyes prickling. Yes, she knew, this was it. These words were exactly how she felt but could never express so eloquently. Her heart was filled with a clarity hitherto undiscovered. "Sei-san," she whispered, voice trembling. She was no longer smiling or giggling. Her hands clutched at the paper tightly, like she had been told a horrible truth she'd been avoiding for many years. "Is this what you've wanted to say to me... all this time?"
Her jaw was tight, and her teeth clenched tightly as she blinked away the tears of hurt inflicted yesteryear. "Is this why you chose me to be your inspiration for this cruel story? But she couldn't stop turning the pages, and the drama unfolded in a climax that Yumi felt would be seared in her imagination forever:
As the tossing and turning sleeper awoke from her dreams, the artist realized that her sweating, clammy face was bathed in tears. There was no body left to hold, no more warm form to kiss and worship. The woman of night visitations, those unsure hours of unreality, had gone. The dreams, once so strong and saturated with Lilith's sensual presence, slowly, but surely, faded away. The tormented worlds of hell were closed to the artist, and though she was now free from the succubus's curse, no one had asked her if she ever even wanted it to end.
Why had the seductress left? Was it because of guilt? Or the fear that one day, the artist would fall into the abyss of the succubus's hunger and never return to the living? The artist would never know. All she does know is that she still feels the daimon's hands over her skin, gripping her flesh, slipping tenderly and carefully within, so that it neither hurt nor scarred but delighted instead. She still paints and makes a modest living, even though she never knew the name of her beloved - life still feels as solid to her as the paintbrush in her fingers, but far less real than Lilith's kisses and taste. That delicious taste, a fragrance of a night dweller. Her haunting hands will remain around her forever, legs shaking, hips quivering, even if -
And this is a big if - Those hands were ever real.
That was the last sentence. That was the end of the story. Stunned, inwardly reeling, Yumi slowly lowered the manuscript, her hands clammy and her throat dry.
She was shaking.
What had this novel done to her?
"Sei," she croaked loudly, her heart painfully cracking in two.
It was almost six o'clock. Sei took a deep breath as she opened the door to the Yamayurikai common room. How long had it been she stepped into this structure and set foot in the room? She felt a bit like an intruder. "Yumi," she called, walking in. "You told me to pick you up around this time. You shouldn't stay much longer. Come on, let's go. I'll take you to dinner. There's a pretty decent ramen place I've been having for the past month." Her eyes fell on Yumi's flushed and invigorated face. Her eyes were shining mysteriously, and her entire demeanour... somehow looked even more alluring than before. "Erm," said Sei awkwardly, "you don't need to give me feedback about my book just yet. When you're ready, or when you swing by my place again, you can tell me whether my grammar was clumsy, or if I need to refine the delivery - "
"Tea?" interjected Rosa Chinensis amidst the rambling, her eyes shining with a strange light as she stared at Sei's short hair, at her white shirt and jeans.
"You're the Red Rose," argued Sei, catching herself quickly walking towards the window. "You don't need to bother serving a humble visitor like me." She passed by Yumi's chair. Yumi stared down at the table as she did, not saying a word. She leaned against the windowpane, staring out at the trees, shrubs, and lawn before turning to look at Rosa Chinensis.
They looked at each other for several long moments.
Yumi flicked back her long brunette tresses. "Not too bad," she declared. "Very good, in fact. I really enjoyed it."
"Thanks," murmured Sei, not sure what else to utter. "It's hard for someone who's never been to a Western country to write about their themes and mythology. But I thought I'd give it a go. I'm an English major, after all."
Yumi slowly stood up, her long brown hair flowing freely like Sachiko's. Sei felt her heart skip a beat as she watched Yumi place her slender fingers on her draft. Was she always this tall? When did she start looking her eye-to-eye? Didn't she used to look down at her innocent face?
You're catching up too quickly, thought the wordsmith desperately.
"It sounds like you're telling your readers something that you've suppressed for a long time in this story," mused Yumi, staring at her pointedly. "Through Lilith. Through your protagonist, the artist."
"Like?" challenged Sei.
"Like about yourself. It was like meeting a new person as I read this," murmured Yumi cryptically. "It's as if I really did say goodbye to Satou Sei and never saw her again. This is how I've felt like ever since that day you called me. And now I know why my heart's been so uneasy all this time."
"Uneasy? What do you mean?" prompted the writer, keeping her best poker face. It was cracking, though. She knew she was looking uncomfortable and deeply lonely, and Yumi knew it.
"Uneasy about how you still feel about me. Unsure about whether you'd want to hold and fondle me again, like in the old days." Rosa Chinensis crossed her arms, completely calm and almost nonchalant. "I was wondering something along the lines of whether you'd be willing to let me lick you out."
In shock at the proposal, the former White Rose shrugged helplessly, staring at Yumi with betrayed, weak eyes. She crossed her arms defensively. "Or something similar," shrugged Rosa Chinensis, "but that was just my feeling when I was reading your book."
Sei felt her already coarsening voice choke up at the back of her dry throat. "I... I didn't know you wanted that," she said meekly. "I'm pretty surprised you'd even say something like that, Yumi-chan."
"Don't call me Yumi-chan ever again," demanded Rosa Chinensis suddenly, stunning her crushed senpai into silence, "because it's not going to work on me anymore. Anyway, maybe I'm misinterpreting all those sex scenes from you. Okay, forget the licking out - maybe you just want a drink with me?" pressed Yumi mercilessly and sarcastically. "Come on. What else would you have been trying to tell me? I'm not stupid."
Sei couldn't speak. But perhaps she shouldn't have been so naive. She knew this had been a long time coming, and Yumi knew it. They both knew it. "I don't understand," declared Yumi, her voice growing frustrated and angry. Sei almost felt frightened by the Red Rose's wrath and ire, but it was her words that stung most. She gestured at the draft on the table violently. "I'm the artist... aren't I?" cried Rosa Chinensis, who looked like she wanted to burst forward and clutch Sei in her arms. But there was an invisible wall between them, a barrier that the novel had implicitly acknowledged. "And you... you, Sei-san, are the succubus Lilith. Beautiful, carefree, lonely - why are you so honest and generous with others when you can't even let yourself tell us your most intimate yearnings? Why is there such a difference between the way you nurture and guide us and the way you live? That's what I hate about you." Her voice grew into a shrill yell. "Shimako-san would want to know. I want to know!"
"I can only express a false self. An inauthentic self. A fake self. My honesty has rarely been rewarded," stammered a defeated Sei, swallowing nervously. "I don't know what to do with us. I never did. You always belonged to her. And I know that I can't belong to anyone." She hugged herself, wishing she could disappear into the wooden floorboards of the Lily Mountain Council Mansion. "If I can't belong to even Shimako... how could I bring myself to heap all my baggage on you!" she sputtered, losing her composure for the first time in a long time.
Yumi smiled bitterly, still rooted to the spot, like they had both frozen in time - frozen in each other's paths since the day Sei left the school. "If only you were the demoness that the artist loved. Her love was so real, meant for the artist alone. But I'm not sure I can say the same of your love, Sei," she declared.
The novelist's heart melted and her knees weakened at the lack of an honorific in Yumi's address. Where had she learnt to say all the right things? Her eyes tentatively, shyly, made their way around Yumi's slender back, around that deep-green school uniform she had once touched so long ago.
"God help us. We have such a long way to go," said Yumi bittersweetly, slumping visibly. She was emotionally exhausted. "It took a fucking erotic fantasy novel to get you to tell me honestly how you really feel about me."
Sei stared at the floor, ashamed beyond words.
"Do you ever plan to grow your hair long again?" came Yumi's question, and her voice had returned to its usual, gentle and light quality.
Sei was too drained to be shocked at Yumi's incredible, foul-mouthed outburst. "No," she replied. "Growing it back is the last thing I want anyone to see."
"Yeah? Well, I look forward to the day you start growing them for me again." Having calmed down, Yumi smirked, and Sei remembered that this was not the Yumi of two years ago. Rosa Chinensis turned away and began to walk around the table towards the door. The sun had set and the stars were beginning to glimmer in the sky outside their window. "It's Friday and I'm still at school. How miserable."
She glanced back at Sei, her mature, fearless eyes reflecting Sei's vulnerable expression. "It's going to happen. Going out for a drink, at least."
Looking up for once, Sei met Yumi's irises. She couldn't speak, but her mild nod was all that Yumi wanted.
Maybe now, a bit of the healing could begin. Perhaps a bit of lost time could be regained.
Smiling, Rosa Chinensis closed the door behind her, leaving the novelist to her own thoughts.
Kei had never seen Sei work so late into the night, not even on her usual better runs. "Come on, woman. You have to get some rest. It's ten past four. You haven't slept a wink," she half-yawned, peering past the slightly opened door and peering at Sei's hunched back in the fluorescent glow of the desk lamp. "You just barricaded yourself in here right after dinner. And at least put some pyjamas on. You look so weird writing in just your undies."
"Shush, Kei. Please." Sei's short reply sounded genuinely apologetic. "Can you give me some time to myself, just this time? Come the dawn..." She licked her lips, her eyes affixed to the warm glow of her laptop. "Come the sunrise, I'll be coming up with a second draft. A better draft. The one I'm going to refine and submit to my publisher."
Kei closed her eyes and quietly shut Sei's door, smiling to herself.
It's been a long time since I saw you so interested in something.
Sei continued to scribble feverishly onto her notes (which were piling up on her already small desk) and tap away at her keyboard. Soon, she would be taking the best of her copious writing and transcribing it onto her laptop. She would head downtown and to the library. She was on the verge of a breakthrough.
Thanks to Yumi-chan - no, Yumi - she knew what she needed to do.
This was going to be her opus.
NEXT DRAFT: LET THE INSPIRATION TAKE FLIGHT.
A/N: Dear readers, thank you for checking this chapter out and forgive my long time in uploading it. :) Work has been as busy and stressful as usual, but the bigger reason was that I had to develop two storylines for one chapter - the addition being Sei's very own story. :) Anyway, see you next time!