Hi everyone, and sorry for the very long delay. Once again I would recommend reading the previous chapter (or even the previous two if you can't remember at all what has happened) to understand the chronology, especially if you have not been reading this fic recently. If something confuses you, feel free to PM me.
Enjoy!
10. The Memory of Running
The humming of Youko's laptop subsided suddenly, officially marking the beginning of her summer holiday. She closed the curtains, tidied up whatever useful files still scattered on her table and disposed of the rest. Slipping into her black, slim-fit jacket, she gave her office one more glance.
Some people tried to make their work surroundings feel like themselves as much as possible, but Youko had never been one of them. There was not a single personal item in the clinically furnished room, not a single indicator that it had been used by a very real human being, as opposed to some android. Even her coffee cup was a plain white one.
In fact, when she had just taken up the junior position in her current company, she had filled her office with pretty decorations and nostalgic mementos from her past; blue flowers in ornate vases, small but detailed paintings, photographs from the old times… However, as she over time had started to feel less and less comfortable with her working life, she had more or less consciously removed all her personalized possessions from the room until it had become nothing but a cold husk, more like a concept of an office than a real one. Certainly no-one could have guessed that it was "home" to one of the company's long-time employees. Her changed preferences had aroused some confusion in her associates, but in her more mature opinion, trying to make herself comfortable while she was playing the role of a corporate lawyer was always going to be a futile effort.
Thus, she could hardly say that she was attached to her workplace in any manner. This time, too, she left her office resolutely, without looking back.
In the previous month, she had been strongly involved in a court case that had eventually resulted in their victory. The aftermath was predictable enough; enthusiastic smiles, a flood of congratulations, five-star meals written off as expenses… And during all the fairly lengthy festivities, her marital status had not been mentioned a single time. Youko could only wonder did they actually expect her to forget all the rumours that had been circulating about her and all the times she had simply known they had been rolling their eyes behind her back just by making her the hero of the month and giving her a pay rise she should have already had years ago.
Fuck you all, she had wanted to say. Give it a month or two and I will once again be what I have always been: a selfish freak and a sorry excuse of a woman.
Very few knew that Youko came from a working-class background, well outside the middle-class Japanese dream. She could bet that the aristocratic manner she had carried herself with in high school and in university had fooled almost everyone into believing that her father must have been a CEO rather than a construction worker, and she had never bothered to correct the misperceptions.
Driving her car out of the car park to the highway, for the first time in a long time she thought about calling her mother. She knew that doing so would result in nothing but grief, but she could not stop worrying about her parents. Although they had not had a proper discussion in over two years, and although Youko had absolutely no interest in explaining for the millionth time why she whatsoever had no intention of marrying a fellow lawyer and giving birth to a host of children, she still missed them and kept sending them money on a monthly basis. Her efforts never earned her any real appreciation, but she preferred to think of her "donations" as some kind of charity.
With her new salary, she could easily afford some additional expenses. When she thought about the amounts of money passing her bank account in the recent years, she would always have a surreal feeling. When she had been a child, she could have hardly believed such money even existed in the world, let alone that one day she would be one of those with the privilege to spend such astronomical sums. She could only guess what her parents would think if they knew she would be spending the last week of her summer holiday in Hawaii.
She had not been exactly the most cheerful person in the world during the past months, but pondering about the upcoming trip made her smile, if only very tentatively. In the autumn, she had dreamt about a vacation with a certain someone, but in reality there would be no Sei with her. However, there would be lots of sunshine, ice-cold pina coladas and pretty girls in swimsuits, although she highly doubted that she would be in the mood to enjoy seeing even the most beautiful of women.
Still, she was happy that she could at least to some extent think about Sei and even joke about her without feeling paralysing pain as in the winter. She did not miss her any less, on the contrary, sometimes it felt as if her heart was so filled with longing that it was about to burst, yet the longing was one of bittersweet nature, very unlike the heartbreaking anxiety she had felt only a few months ago. Sometimes she felt more like a teenager in love rather than an adult with a broken heart. Be as it may, at least they were talking to each other once again, if only through phone-calls which seldom lasted more than five minutes.
They never talked about anything special. It was all 'how-are-you' –s and 'yes-I-am-fine' –s, mostly their conversations revolved around the weather and what they had had for lunch, and Youko did not dare to hope for more even in her wildest dreams. Every time she heard Sei's voice chattering away about the usual nonsense she would feel her mind lighten up.
Her head filled with thoughts, her car was in front of her apartment before she had even noticed actually having departed from the city centre. As she stepped out of her Audi, she saw the blazing sun suspended on the blue canvas, against which the grey concrete blocks appeared even more unbearably ugly than usually.
Her mood suddenly becoming somewhat sullen, she hurried up the stairwell and upon entering her home, she collapsed straight on her bed, without even bothering to take off her shoes. All her official composure had rapidly unravelled, and in her current state of mind she found it hard to believe that she had been the coolly smiling office-lady only hours ago. The distance between the two personalities could have been several light years. Upon closing her eyes, she was quickly caught in a deep, dreamless sleep.
"…Hello?"
The black-haired woman's voice was trembling as she pressed the green button on her mobile phone. In the deepest reaches of her mind, she had been waiting for the phone to ring, she had been staring it so intently in the past days, hoping that by her sheer will alone she could have made it come alive. And now it finally had.
"It's me. Are you busy?"
The blonde woman on the other end of the phone was curled up on the floor, and from where she was sitting she could see her own reflection in the mirror. What she saw made her terrified. She looked tired. Old. Worn-out. Only a withered shadow of what she had once been.
She listened the woman she had called speak, and even amidst her pain she knew it was exactly what she was supposed to be doing.
"No, no, I am in the middle of absolutely nothing. Did you… Did you want to talk?"
There was so much she wanted to say. She was tired of her loneliness, she wanted to bemoan her sad existence, knowing that her friend would listen until the end of the world if need be. Her friend… It startled her that she was thinking about the Red Rose as a friend. Once upon a time she had been so disillusioned, so bitter, yet all the pain had not been enough to cut the bonds between them, and every time she heard the black-haired woman speak, the agonizing memories would always be intertwined with the euphoric ones.
"How have you been doing?"
Her tones were cheerful, her real mood less so. On the other end of the receiver, it was not hard for the Red Rose to hear the White one's plight seeping through the latter's falsely sweet voice. Yet she was not cheeky enough to blatantly call the bluff, even though she burned from the desire to do so, out of sheer concern more than anything else.
"It's still a dog's life, I tell you. I still feel like a horse, who has its eyes blindfolded and a carrot suspended in front of it, just close enough for it to smell it and desire it, but never close enough for it to reach it. I keep pushing on, but the distance between me and the goal line always remains the same."
She bit her lip. Knowing that her friend was not exactly in the best mood either, it had not been her purpose to blurt out such bleak visions, yet the words had simply escaped from her lips in an irresistible fashion. She noticed she was recently starting to have the bad habit of imposing her worries spontaneously on other people, and it was not something she was proud of.
"I am sorry, that was neither here nor there. To tell the truth, I am okay, I guess. The spring makes me feel happy and a bit wistful, as always. And I have been playing with this thought of booking a flight to Honolulu for my summer holiday", she continued in apologizing tones.
"Are you planning to go alone?"
"Well, yes… unless a certain someone wants to join me."
Their hearts skipped a beat, perfectly in synch. The raven-haired woman could not believe she had uttered those words with such cruel ease, and the fair-haired one was simply too overwhelmed to reply. The invitation was terrifying for them both, yet it attracted them as nothing else ever could.
The blonde woman was still carried back to the rainy day whenever she thought about her former love. She could see, almost feel, herself soaking wet, standing in the heavy rain, her drenched pangs in front of her eyes. She had not bothered to wipe them away, because she had not wanted to see.
Up until now, it had been all she ever remembered about the black-haired woman. But now, the pictures from the previous autumn were drifting in front of her eyes as well; the image of the former Red Rose standing in front of the Mansion, her face, her whole demeanour giving off the aura of bewilderment, and how sweet a scene it had been.
In the airport, the blonde woman had believed, or rather she had wanted to believe, that ten years had been enough for the scars to heal, enough to quench the hottest flames of passion and bitterness, enough for them to carry on with their lives without denial. She had been wrong, inexplicably, irrevocably wrong. But now, the moment in which they had gazed into each other's eyes in the courtyard of Lillian seemed as strong as the scene with the heavy rain. Had it been from a sappy movie, there would have been cherry blossoms floating around them, when they had lost themselves in the gripping nostalgia.
"I think this time there the certain someone has the pass the opportunity."
It had been too much, too soon for her to take, but her refusal was soft, friendly, and in the black-haired woman's ears, it held the potential for reconsideration.
"Yes, I think she should not waste her picturesque fair skin by sunbathing."
The blonde one laughed, and the other woman was quick to join her. They both hoped with equal fervour for their mirth to make all the darkness between them subside, if even temporarily, but at the same time they both knew with equal certainty that such thoughts were only naïve desires, and nothing else. Too much had happened for it all to be resolved in such a simple fashion, but even as they both wondered whether they had drifted too far to be connected ever again, their bond refused to be severed. Because as long as there existed a single happy memory, the human heart could hang on to it, and the more desperate it was, the stronger the grip became.
"I am tired of running, Youko. Whenever I even think about Lillian, my thoughts turn to you, and I can't stand it. But I don't want my life to be all about escaping from the past. Because is it not true that without memories one has not been alive at all? So I don't want to forget, or that is how I would like to think. When I am old, I don't want to have the memory of running as the sole memory from my youth. To tell the truth, I still can't honestly say that I am happy for meeting Shiori, let alone you. But I would like to believe that one day I might look back on those times and smile, even if I would still feel a sting in my heart. Then, I would be able to leave this world without having any regrets. Because then, I might feel that what has happened has been worth it. "
A/N: Sorry about the overflowing melodrama, if it annoys you. I just can't seem to get rid of it.
