Title: Novelties
Author: A Paper Moon
Pairing: Narumi Ayumu/Yuizaki Hiyono
Fandom: Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna
Theme: #4―our distance and that person
Rating: G
Disclaimer: All characters of Spiral are the property of Kyou Shirodaira; I allege no possession of said characters. I only request to take them to over-rowdy soccer games and force hem to play at gunpoint.
Summary: At thirty-four thousand feet, she can still dream.
I apologize for dropping off the grid. Please enjoy this AU piece.
-o-
Redundancy is definitely on her list ten least favorite words.
For the last three years, the only thing that kept her going was the hopes of receiving her Master of Fine Arts but, as she sits on the large Boeing 747 currently riding the breezes at thirty-four thousand feet, she begins to wonder if even that is enough of an incentive.
As the young woman pulls her laptop from her carry-on, she tries her hardest to block out the larger man occupying 9B and his nasally snore. They've been flying for six hours and fifty eight minutes according her watch and she sighs when she realizes she probably has another forty minutes to go before the plane begins its decent into Charles de Gaulle.
The familiar tune of her computer turning on brings a sense of nostalgia to her as reminiscent memories of her classes back in New York come flashing through her mind. She remembers her Journalism 127 class with the old, bat-like professor and her high pitched voice. She feels a pang of sorrow at the images of her small group of friends and the fun they used to have mindlessly meandering through upper Manhattan and Central Park. Now, six years later, she is alone, on a flight to Paris, and wondering if she'll ever have the adventures she wrote of.
When her sophomore professor of fine literature told her she had a clear future in writing as either a novelist or journalist, she had mocked him. Yet, here she is three and a half weeks from her final year at Barnard, writing her first article for Carine Roitfeld, editor-in-chief of French Vogue. Her fingers are swift across the keyboard as her mind reels at a thousand miles and hour. She writes of the fashion trends she has spotted in New York and how they are all but descendants of French couture.
Her words of flowery diction tug at her want to spin tales of fiction.
If she is being honest with herself, she can definitely say that she never saw herself on the fashion forefront writing away for a woman she's never met before. If anything, she can trace her love for writing back to AP Language class, her junior year of high school where she wrote of freeing thoughts as quickly as they formed in her mind. She could fantasize of heroines and tragic love stories and epic adventures of traveling and companionship and often did when given the chance. She even had her archetypical hero: a boy five months younger than her with brooding eyes and a fiery personality.
He sat away from most of class, his nose usually pressed deep into the spine of a detective novel, eyes of liquid bronze moving faster than she could mange to think. He scarcely left the class without another work if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle under his literate belt. And though she hardly ever likes to own up to her school girl fantasies of fixing a "broken youth," she did feel those wants inside her every day she was present in third period. When her AP Lang final consisted of a three page, short story, she was ready and with a bursting need to write. She placed him as a young detective in need of his personal Watson and, clichéd as it was, she wrote herself as his right-hand man. Her story ended up being nearly eight pages; with her small, hardly discernible handwriting, it was more likely leaning toward fifteen. She turned in the first three, their ends neatly trimmed with the hero and his heroine running away, hand in hand as they solved yet another of the unsolvable mysteries.
However, the last five pages consisted of a darker continuation where the heroine was kidnapped by a drug cartel and held for ransom and the hero, full of malice and anger, rushed to her side to save her. In the end the heroine lived and the hero died. The final paragraphs were tender as the heroine held her dying hero atop her skinned knees and brushed away his bloody hair with her bruised hands. With seconds left, the heroine lowered her face to that of her savior's and kissed his dying lips.
But that was high school nonsense, or so her parents told her. Novelists hardly make enough money to live, they told her. However, editors do. She argued for nine days, refused to speak for three, and then conceded and declared her major to be journalism.
"Please return your seats to their upright and locked positions. We are beginning our decent into Charles de Gaulle. Current time is 10:35 PM. From Air France and your ground crew stationed at JFK, we thank you for your services and hope you enjoy your stay in Paris. Au revoir."
The flight attendant's announcement jolts the woman from her reminiscing and, with shock, she views her laptop. Black text spells out an alternate ending to her AP Lang final where the hero is twenty-seven, the heroin twenty-eight, and they are meeting at Charles de Gaulle where there is another international conundrum waiting to be solved.
The plane banks sharply and she can see the bleary outline of Eiffel Tower through the pattering rain sliding down the pressurized window. She sighs, bedraggled and tired and in need of shower and a supple comforter. As she slides out of her seat, through the terminals, and onto the still bustling streets of Paris, she can all but hope that the same boy from her AP Language class bumps into her. Unfortunately, she makes her way to a cab and to the front, double French doors (of course) of the Four Seasons without a single sighting of a could be hero. She showers, changes into a night shirt, and slips beneath a cream colored silk duvet, her eyes fluttering close with images of what that boy two seats in front of her would look like now.
Thank you all for continuing to review even though I haven't updated for more than six months. College has been rough but enjoyable and I'm definitely hoping to finish these out before my sophomore year. Thanks again, you guys. :) Special shout out to bells-mannequin who reviewed a few days ago. I was just finishing this piece when I saw I had another review and yours just made me especially happy.