Chapter 5:
The phone was ringing, and it was annoying.
I groaned a little, turning over in bed and pulling my pillow over my head. It was my extremely rare Sunday off, free from Haruhi-doings or anything of the like, and my sleep had to be interrupted ages before I was ready by that infernal ringing. Damn phone...just somebody pick up already!
"Moshi moshi..." Oh, no, not you. Anyone but you, just don't pick up the phone. Okay, if you have to pick up the phone, let it not be for me, please, please...
Pitter patter. No, thump thump thump. Imouto-chan is nearly twelve, after all, and has inherited not a wit of gracefulness.
Bang. That was the door. I pulled the pillow even firmer around my ears, as if I could will away the presence of my sister, the phone, and whoever was on the other end. No such luck.
"Kyon, Kyon, telephone..."
Accompanying her toneless singing came the rush of coldish air as she whipped the blankets off of me and began tugging at my pajamas incessantly. I gave up and removed the pillow (I wasn't in the mood for self-strangulation, anyway) and tugged the phone out of her hands. "Who is it?" But she was already skipping out the door.
I cleared my throat, full of early-morning muck, and spoke into the phone, "Moshi moshi?"
"..."
"Oh, it's you, Nagato. What's up?"
"Library."
"What?"
"..."
"Nagato, what's wrong?"
"..."
I have become a self-proclaimed expert in the fine art of deciphering Nagato-silence by now. And something about this particular silence told me something was very wrong, but she wasn't going to tell me. That was disturbing. If it were in the normal line of duty, she would lay it all out for me in her usual monotone string of incomprehensible words, but this was different. Almost as if it were a problem that transcended her regular duty. Almost as if it were...no...I had to be wrong...
"I'm coming," I said into the phone, and hung up. My morning repose completely pointless at this point, I merely shoved some what-I-deemed-clean clothes on and grabbed my bike, heading downtown.
Out of breath and sweaty as I was, I must have gathered some strange looks from the various librarians and patrons who were crazy enough to inhabit a library at 8:30 in the morning. I half wondered if Nagato had risen early and waited outside until someone had let her in. The other half of me was wondering, Okay, in library. Now what?
She wasn't on the first level, where I usually expected her, among heavy volumes of non-fiction. I ascended the stairs and entered the fiction level, passing through aisles of books, gradually smelling mustier as I reached the back...
And then a small blot of blue caught my attention from the corner of my eye. I backtracked, my speed having carried me beyond, and tentatively approached her.
Nagato, what's wrong?
She looked up at me, expressionless, kneeling on the floor with a volume clutched in both hands. But that sense I had had earlier...it's true, isn't it? It is a human problem. Human? Nagato, when did...?
"Nagato." I knelt down next to her and gently took the book from her hands. Her expression remained unchanged, but something was different. Her eyes...were they glassier? I glanced down at the page she had been reading. It was in poorly translated Japanese, with Italian words appearing here and there in katakana. I flipped over to the front cover and gazed at the title thoughtfully.
"The Name of the Rose...What is this, a romance novel? When did you start reading romance novels, Nagato?"
She shook her head ever so slightly, and I scanned the opened page. Lines jumped out at me..."fire", "books", "library"...
So that's what's got you so worked up, huh? Does reading a fiction story about a burning library really affect you this much?
(A/N: It did affect me that much, lol)
She looked away, and I set the offending book down and reached out for her, very slowly. My hands found her shoulders, and I felt, to my surprise, that she was shaking.
Shaking. Nagato. I didn't know whether to rejoice that she was showing such a human emotion, or to be alarmed at the extent to which she had been affected.
So I let all that go and pulled her tight.
Soft...so soft...every inch of her was like baby's skin. Even though she was so thin, I had none of the skeleton sensation one has when touching the drained frame of an elderly person.
And then...like the wings of a newborn butterfly, her tiny hands crept under my arms and circled around my back.
I felt my world slow and spin as my breath left me entirely.
I swallowed hard and said seriously, "Nagato...that book, it's just fiction, you know? It wasn't an actually library that burned down. It was all just the imagination of the author." I gave a little mirthless laugh. "That's what you get for reading an Italian author, you know."
"Fiction."
"Right. It's not true. It's all made up."
There was a moment of silence, and then she said, "I know the meaning of fiction."
My cheeks heated in embarrassment. "Of course you do." I started to pull back, but she refused to let go. She was remarkably strong; I should have known that already. I stayed where I was, arms frozen around her shoulders, her head tucked under my chin, both of us still kneeling into each other.
"...Nagato?"
Pause. Then I felt her head shake the negatory millimeter or so. "Yuki. Call me Yuki."
"Are you sure?"
She pulled away, finally, and locked her unblinking gaze on mine as I let my hands drop away, reluctantly. Then her eyelids drooped a fraction of a millimeter in affirmation.
"Okay." If you're sure, Nagato.
"Now." Then, as a tacked-on afterthought, "Please."
I smiled nervously at her and tucked the ever-longer lock of purplish-grey hair behind her ear. "Okay." Pause. Awkward. Why? Unprecedented. Too familiar. Alien...
"Yu...Yuki..."
It felt good. Like ice-cream sliding over my tongue and melting on the way. "Yuki."
Her eyelids lowered even more, which seemed like an incredible outburst of emotion from her, and for a moment she seemed to be looking not at my eyes, but lower down on my face. Then she stood, gracefully, and I, in order to avoid the potential gratification that would emerge as a result of my kneeling next to a pair of skinny legs in a short skirt, also rose. Sighing, I stuffed my hands in my pockets and handed her the book I'd picked back up.
"Do you want to check this out?"
She blinked, but did not reach for the book, which was as good as screaming out, "I can't bear to read any more of it!"
"You should finish it."
"No."
A little taken aback by her firm negative response, and a little annoyed at her stubbornness, I answered a little louder, "No, you should. You've never not finished a book, right? What will you feel like if you don't finish this one?"
She stood up infinitesimally straighter, and looked me in the eye. "Then it will be the first time."
As she turned and began walking toward the stairs, I followed her slight form with my eyes and thought,
Yes, there is a first time for everything. A first time to call your name, a first time to be the one to save you, for a change. Naga...Yuki, when did you first feel it? The human sensation called "emotion"?
It is changing you.
.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess with locks of red, streaming down her back like a waterfall at sunset. Through various circumstances, the princess found herself in trouble. But there was a handsome prince with a sword like a bolt of lightning from the sky, who came along and saved her. They all lived happily ever after. The end.
Do girls really want that kind of story? Do they genuinely want to be the ones who are helplessly locked in a castle until the prince of their dreams comes along and slays the dragon, or the evil sorcerer?
That seems kind of boring.
.
Baker's half dozen, 150 yen.
I was already out in town, alone for a change, since Yuki had suddenly decided to disappear, and the sign appeared in the bakery window like the glimmering horizon oasis to a desert traveler. My stomach growled at me to enter and so, very obediently, I ducked into the shop.
(Irrasshaimasu!)
Instantly, my olfactory senses were overloaded with the incredible smell of Western-style morning sweets. Bagals, cinnamon rolls, even a moon-shaped roll that I'd never seen before but recalled that it was French. I stood still, inhaled, and then beat out two people to the counter.
"The sale in the window...is it still going?" The girl behind the counter nodded and, grinning, pulled out a box with seven cheerfully glazed doughnuts in it. "Will that be all, sir?"
I considered looking around me, taking my time to enjoy the colorful displays of sprinkled doughnuts, maple-bars, and bear paws, but feeling the indignation of those behind me in line who should have been here first, I nodded and slapped down the cash on the counter before scooping up my well-won victory trophy and getting out.
Mm...still warm; the glaze had hardly hardened. I sighed luxuriously and let my teeth sink into one, the sweetness spreading of crispy outside and feathery inside. I closed my eyes in bliss as I stepped out into the intersection.
So when my hand, still holding the remainder of that doughnut, was roughly grabbed to pull me a couple of feet to the side, the first thought I had was, What the hell?
It started to come out my vocal chords, too, but it was drowned out by the sound of a blazing horn, screeching brakes, and before my eyes, a flash of bright metal announced the too-close presence of a vehicle which had run the red light.
Mouth open, unceremoniously displaying the remains of the unswallowed doughnut, I looked over at the person who had grabbed my hand so suddenly.
Like an angel without wings, Asahina-san's heavenly figure stood before me, wide eyes shining in worry.
"Kyon-kun...daijoubu desu ka?"
"Ha...hai," I replied, a tad confused.
This was odd. The roles seemed completely reversed. Wasn't I always supposed to be the one saving her? Come to think of it, had Asahina-san ever been useful in an emergency situation before?
She was still holding my hand.
"Youkatta...I was so worried, when I saw that car speeding toward you, I thought..." Her eyebrows worked towards each other, quivering as she blinked at me in concern.
Asahina-san, it's okay now. We really should cross, though.
She gasped and smiled as I tugged her by the hand. "Of...of course! Kyon-kun, I didn't expect to see you today. What brings you out here?"
I smiled back at her. She was impossible not to smile at. "I had a minor emergency at the library this morning." We stepped up onto the curb on the other side of the street, and I suddenly remembered the doughnut box I was still holding onto. "Asahina-san..."
"Hai?"
I held out the box, lid open slightly. "Would you like...?"
"Demo..."
"I insist!"
She laughed a little as she slipped one little hand inside and pulled out a glazed O of goodness. "Dewa...arigatou!"
I watched her munch away happily, and thought,
How ironic.
The ice princess, locked up in her castle of lonely shadows and patient books, the one whom we all rely on to save the day. Not Amazon, nor Valkyrie-just Nagato-Yuki, a plain, ordinary Humanoid Interface. And yet...I get the feeling that all she wants is to lay aside her monotonous duties, and hold, and be held, to be soothed and comforted.
The fire princess, sweet and virginal, loved by all and the very picture of loveliness and gentle hospitality, the one that no prince would ever hesitate to save from a burning building. This fragile, happy child, sweetness personified. And yet...so frustrated by her incapabilities, worn down from being saved so many times, helpless to respond.
But for once, the fairytale is disintegrating. Let it melt away. Let humanity override this script.
I watched Asahina-san smile up at me and slyly reach for another doughnut. Teasingly, I held the box out of her grasp and enjoyed her face forming a pout as she jumped in vain to attempt to reach it. We must have looked like a couple of elementary school kids.
Could there be any lovelier way to spend the day than to hold Yuki in the morning, and laugh with Asahina-san in the afternoon?
And yet...the fire and the ice are so colorless, so lusterless, without the mirror of lights to make them dance and whirl.
Why does it trouble me?
Yes, how ironic.
No Haruhi today.
Author's Notes:
Gomen nasai! I'm sorry this is so late, and I'm sorry it doesn't have any real ending, and...well, anyway, when I formulated this chapter, it had a point (AKA, to demonstrate more of the growing feelings of friendship between Kyon and Nagato and Asahina-san, and also to subvert the patterns of who saves whom from what), but it turned out a little...anticlimatic...Well, the last chapter will be out in a couple more days, so thank you for your patience!
Translations:
Moshi moshi: hello (on the telephone)
Irrasshaimasu: Welcome (to the shop)
Daijoubu desu ka: are you alright?
Youkatta: I'm relived
Demo: But...
Dewa...: Well then...
For those who don't know, there's a thing in Japan where you decline the first time somebody offers you food, and then accept the second time. That's what Asahina-san is doing here.