15. Strange
"It's…strange…isn't it?" Anna asked the night sky as she took another bite of the sweets Yoh had managed to sneak out.
He tilted his head towards her, tearing his gaze from the stars that peppered the darkness they were sitting under. "What is?"
"All those months…don't they…I don't know…" She clenched her teeth together, somewhat flustered that Yoh was seeing her at a loss for words. "They seem like—"
"A distant memory?" He nodded emphatically, as he wiped his hands on his pants and proceeded to unwrap a candy bar. "Now it feels like I never left at all, right?" He broke off a piece and handed it to her.
She simply blinked down at it, cradling the chocolate fragment in her cupped hands. "What is this?" she asked snippily, not wanting to let him know that she had never seen such a thing in her entire life.
He cocked his head to the side in confusion and smiled a bit uncertainly. "Wait, are you serious?"
She shot him a murderous, homicidal look, her eyes narrowing quickly, daring him to repeat his question.
He scooted away from her very subtly but still obvious enough for Anna to just barely notice it and the smile dropped off of his face. "You've…never eaten a chocolate bar before? It's candy. It's good!"
Anna sniffed it, not trusting the seemingly harmless appearance of the now melting concoction that sat in her hands. Her gaze fixed onto him again. "What does it taste like?" she barked.
He shrugged. "It tastes like…like…uh…" He frowned as he realized that he could not, in fact, describe the taste of chocolate. "Um…It tastes like…chocolate…?" he offered lamely.
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you serious?" She turned her nose up in the air, all the dignity in the world and melting chocolate in her hands.
He crumpled up the empty wrapper and stuck it in his pocket. "You're weird."
She smirked. "I'm not the one speechless here when I ask a simple question of you." She tentatively took a bite of the candy in her hand and once she tasted it…stuffed the rest of it in her mouth. "You're the strange one here," she declared, chewing forcefully before swallowing and rubbing her arms to warm herself.
He shook his head, smiling. "Cold?"
"Yes, but I want to stay out here."
The young Asakura heir studied her figure. "I still think you're a full fledged weirdo." He laughed softly looking back up at the sky, stars, moon, the heavens. "Staying out here when you're freezing cold and only wearing a thin robe…" He shook his head.
She stood up and straightened out said thin robe, stretching her numb legs out a bit on the porch of the house. "It's strange, isn't it? Us being…you know. And yet, somehow, everything works. Everything still goes on in the world." He stared, his mouth agape and his face reddening as she smirked and approached the sliding door and pushed it open. "Who's the weirdo now?" And then she was gone.
"I suppose it's both of us, then, isn't it?" He sighed and turned back towards the night sky, looking at the encroaching city that was slowly creeping towards the nature he so loved, the distant honks of city cars mingling with the chirping of the insects that had somehow found shelter during the winter. The constant bullying that had seemed so important back then, the biggest thing in his life, the most hurtful when there were wars going on in the world, disease ridden villages, starving children, murderers on the loose. Now he can barely recall the foggiest of memories of his life before Anna, the jagged ends of their bittersweet farewell a year ago in Osore and their just as bittersweet reunion in Izumo today having been sewn together, as if his mind was determined to cut out the strange, lonely period of his life of the last year that hadn't included her. The strikingly clear memories back in the Osorezan region and the continuity of it all startled him. He laughed a long and hard laugh as he realized that subconsciously, unconsciously did, indeed, define his life in two parts: with Anna and without Anna.
"Everything still goes on in the world. Everything still goes on."
A/N: wasn't planning on writing a chapter for Our Story today but here you go. I needed a break from doing research on my latest one-shot, Down the Rabbit Hole :)
Anyways, originally, I had planned on doing an Our Story collection for each one of my OTPs. But then recently, I realized that it wasn't really realistic or practical. Fortunately enough, some of your fellow SK readers/writers decided to pick them up ! Long story short, elviella has adopted the HoroTam Our Story series and has posted the first two chapters. GO CHECK HER OUT: fanfiction . net / ~elviella (sOrbetes has picked up the Ren/Pirika OS and roni-chan has adopted the Faust/Eliza one...I think. You guys are still up for it? Haha also, the Our Stories for Lyserg/Jeanne and Pailong/Jun are still up for adoption!)
check me out: shatteredlyre . livejournal . com (remove spaces)
ALSO, interested in doing a Shaman King fanfic contest? Please, please, please check it out! Link for contest info is on my profile page! :)
I'm planning on editing and revising Yoh and the Oni. Because I reread part of it. And died a little inside. So I'll be doing some editing (grammatical stuff, minor characterization things, etc). And then I'll update it. Yes, you read that correctly. I'm updating Yoh and the Oni with an epilogue. Because even if it makes me cringe sometimes, I still love it to death. So be on the lookout for that.
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