From Far Forgotten
A/N: Oh my, that was a LONG break... sorry sorry, I really do want to finish this story! First, my muses flew off on vacation, but by the time they got back there was this big giant wall called school between me and them, and well, it's been a nasty fight.
Now, nearly a year (? really! oh my god!) has passed, and my writing style has totally changed (it sucks now) and so has a lot of my thoughts. But a lot of planning went into this story so I hope that I can follow it through... gambarimasu!
I wish I knew more about Japanese geography. If only I could visit to do research! But, alas, I will have to satify for staring at my own Californian cold polluted beaches. ;;
Chapter 5: Saeki's Memories (The Playmate)
With the way his mouth gaped open, it seemed the monkey king had turned into a fish. He opened it, closed it, then opened it again, and though Ore-sama does not point, he had straightened his finger towards what seemed to everyone else to be an empty space of air.
"That - ... That! - ... what!" Fuji would have chuckled at the way his tiny monkey pupils were twirling round his eyes, and the way Echizen was quirking at him, and the way Momo kept swinging his head around trying to figure out what Atobe was oggling at, if he weren't caught in his own cache of wonder.
"Atobe - can you see me!" Fuji's eyes popped open in surprise, and for a few seconds they practiced staring at each other... until Atobe realized that others around were staring at him.
He glared back at them, and haughtily popped, "You can't - ... Ore-sama does not - ... Ore-sama is tired and cannot stand this over-bearing sun! Kabaji, do something about this. Ore-sama will wait over there." He motioned towards a dense pack of trees.
Fuji and the others glanced in wonder at the bear-like Kabaji who they'd totally not noticed hulking silently at the street entrance, but Fuji didn't take the time to gawk before sliding over to the place Atobe had indicated. He hid his giggles behind his hand as Atobe tried to dignifiedly strut away from the lot who stared at him like he'd grown a second head.
They walked aways into the park, till Atobe spotted a bench and sat cross-legged in full pride, his hands placed imperiously at his knees.
Then he lost his composure for a moment and allowed himself to stare, before haughtily charging, "What - Is - This! What is going on! Fuji Syuusuke of Seigaku, explain yourse - appearance."
A dainty smile met his discomposure. "Well, you see, I've been cursed."
"To be translucent? How gaudy!"
Feeling light-hearted for the first time in days, Fuji chuckled before spending the next hour and half explaining, how the curse caused everyone to forget him and how he now drifted within a weak state of semi-existence. The actual account only took twenty minutes, but it kept getting interrupted by Atobe forcing him to stop so he could glare off any impertinent spectators, or oil up his hair, or tap two fingers between his eyes and say "I see" as if he were the one giving the explanation. None of this annoyed Fuji, though; he'd always found the cavalier tennis captain amusing to say the least, and much of his ego was well deserved. With beauty, at least, Fuji admitted only to himself that he'd given the right places the wrong kind of look, just a few tiny times even while dating Tezuka. It was one of his guilty pleasures.
"But why is it I can see you? Not that I really can. I can see all the trees behind you, but I can definitely tell you're there."
Confusion knotted across Fuji's brow. "I don't really know... you can see me, and you remember who I am. This curse was probably directed at me, then spread out and entered the minds of all those it was made to affect, those connected to me. Like a stone dropped in water sending ripples through a lake, the darkness grew with me as its center."
Tapping gracefully against his forehead in what Hyotei dubbed 'insight', Atobe said after a pause, "Four or five days ago... our family's Onmiyouji declared that a black curse was coming, and made everyone, even the servants, hold onto a talisman he handed out. I did it too though I think it's all gibberish." He eyed the honey-haired youth before him, an eyebrow quirking dubiously. "I suppose I now I have to change my mind."
Whistling under his breath, Fuji thought hardly of this declaration in comparison to Atobe's family behind loaded enough to afford their own personal Onmiyouji. Thinking of his family's own ostentations, and the prices they charged (which included a condition of a high social pedigree), he wondered if it was anyone he knew. Really, rich people had it different.
"I see," Fuji nodded in agreement. "As the caster is only a passionate amateur, a grand master Onmiyouji could with enough preparation place the appropriate counter curse... and he probably already had many wards placed throughout your property as reinforcement." Inside, though, he frowned. Why hadn't his own family been able to do the same?
". . . perhaps that's the limit of their love," he mumbled under his breath, unable to push the shadowy doubts that grew slowly within him.
Atobe must have seen his disconsolate expression. "What's wrong?" He asked. It was cute, how he tried to act nonchalant while sounding concerned.
Fuji glanced at the turquoise eyes watching him then stared at the floor. "It's just...easy to speak of things objectively. . . ." Perhaps finally having someone to talk to had weakened him. His fears slightly edged through his omniscient facade. ". . .But in reality, everyone really did forget me... everyone, even Tezuka..."
"An? Tezuka?" The Hyoutei king flipped his bangs questioningly.
"We're dating," Fuji smiled meekly at him. "Or I guess we were. It wasn't really a secret, we just didn't really advertise."
"Oh?" Now both of Atobe's eyebrows quirked imperiously. "So you two made love?"
"Ah, un." Fuji blushed and quickly turned away.
"Ahn. I see. Hm...and even so he forgot you. Well, maybe its a sign of something."
"Eh! That is - " Fuji turned towards him with alarm, but was interrupted as Atobe stood authoritatively.
"Alright then! As things are, little can be done," he declared. "Therefore, Ore-sama is going to help you."
"Oh!" Fuji's heart fluttered in surprise. "Thank you." Upon hearing Atobe's pledge, he did his best to quietly quell the dread crawling against his nerves. He couldn't bear to think that he and Tezuka were not right for each other...
"So!" Atobe smirked, "Where should we start?"
Burying his fearful reveries, Fuji let his prodigal mind shift through possibilities. Slowly, his trademark smile grew daintily back onto his face.
"Actually, hearing your story gave me an idea."
A strong ocean breeze whipped about his poor white hair, making it stand stiff and scraggly even more than it had before.
Saeki kept pawing at it, trying to control it even a little, but finally gave up. Stretching out his limbs, he plopped backwards into the shimmering sand, no longer caring about the miniscule grains falling into his clothes and hair. Cold air and the lofty smell of salt brought out that whispered feeling of nostalgia this place always brought him.
Overhead, the soft blue sky spread endlessly, calling out memories of his childhood. He'd been so carefree then - what was he saying? He was still pretty carefree now, just a lot less innocent. Or some might say naive, but actually, he hadn't been all that naive even in those days.
He sniggered, recalling all the little pranks they had played. They? Oh yes, him and his childhood friend. It was great to be a kid, everyone always underestimated you.
That friend of his - what was his name again? Saeki let out a snort; forgetting names was unusual for him. But he clearly pictured light, sharp blue eyes, the same color as the sky he stared at now.
That kid had been a little special. He knew all sorts of things no elementary kid would know, and things that even the adults didn't know. He knew that if you put a match to a helium balloon, a booming sound like a gun shot would erupt - and boy did that cause chaos at one of the for-parents days, when they set off the whole row of welcome balloons in the auditorium. One day he brought this chunk of metal he'd swiped from his sister's high school chemistry class, and they threw it in the pool. A horribly nauseating stench raced throughout the entire school, and everyone had to evacuate, all classes cancelled for the day.
But the best pranks were the little ones, the ones no one could ever figure out. One time they called the principal and recorded his voice when he answered "Hello." Then they played the recording back to him. The baldy didn't even recognize his own voice; he said "Hello" again and then some other colloquial thing like "How may I help you." They'd had quite a time recording and replaying everything he said, even mixing in some older recordings from announcements and speeches. After half an hour of muffled giggling and a lot of frustration and anger on the line's other end, the old man finally hung up. Saeki and his partner in crime slipped into the office the next day, eavesdropping on the faculty who were all babbling about some poltergeist and how the principal was hysterically insisting to switch phone companies and rewire all the lines.
And then there were Saeki's favorites, the ones that even Saeki himself couldn't quite understand. He took a rectangular slip of white paper from his shirt pocket, and looked it over with a cheeky smile. His fingers fiddled only with paper and yet the slip was nothing innocent.
"This," the little boy declared, eyes twinkling, "is a talisman. My Onee-chan gave it to me to practice with." He twirled the little slip of paper between his fingers, a fox-like smile creeping across his face. That kid always smiled but the shape of that smile changed, and Saeki especially liked the shape it had now. It pulsed with mischief.
"So? What do you do with it?" the white-haired trouble maker asked. He knew better then to assume that it was only a scrap of paper.
The boy tapped his lips mischievously. "All sorts of things. Almost anything, really. But I thought it would be fun to make kankikujyunjou. They amplify emotions. If you feel a little happy, they'll make you extremely happy, to the point of giddiness. If you feel even the slightest bit sad, they can make you break down crying."
Saeki eyed his friend skeptically, arching an eyebrow for emphasis. "So...how do they work?"
The fox smile widened. "You write down the feeling you want on the talisman, and then, with a little trick, attach it to the person you want to feel that way. It's very simple, but it has all sorts of possibility," he winked, "if you have a good imagination."
Most little boys would have been confused about this, or at least doubtful if they were more mature. Saeki was jubilant.
First they went after their social studies teacher, sheerly out of boredom. Together they decided to write 'forgetful.' When the teacher passed by, his friend blew on the paper, then flicked it towards the unsuspecting man. As if lifted by a wind, the talisman drifted upwards and then somehow tucked itself perfectly into the geezer's shirt pocket, seemingly unnoticed by anyone but the perpetrators.
At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then all of a sudden the old man paused, bringing an abrupt stop to his monotone lecture about the Meiji restoration. He straightened, blinked twice, and then began to rub his chin, humming a little.
"Now, where was I ... the first Japanese capital was established in Nara... or was it Heian?" A deep frown crested into the teacher's cheeks, making him look like a pouty bull dog.
"Sensei!" One of the boys raised his hand. "We were talking about the Meiji era."
"Oh!" The man grumbled in surprise. "Right right, thanks, um, Shiro."
"My name's Ken!"
The class broke out laughing, poking fun at Ken's thwarted attempt to show off.
"Oh yes, sorry Ta- . . .son. Now let's see, where are my lecture notes . . ." The teacher started to fumble around his desk, opening drawers and tapping his finger on the wooden surface as if trying to remember. "Where is my bag?" He started looking around his desk, bending half-way over to peer behind it and on the sides, though he kept looking in the same places over and over again.
This lasted for several minutes, and was kind of sad to watch. Both boys glanced at each other, feeling a pang of guilt.
His friend held two fingers to his lips and lightly chanted some sort of gibberish, then Saeki watched as the talisman slipped upwards out of the pocket and drifted innocently to the floor.
Almost immediately the teacher recalled that he no longer brought his bag to class from the office, and that went back to mumbling in that low pitched monotone about social reforms and the gradual dissolution of the daimyo.
After that they had the time of their lives, coming up with different emotions to put on different people and playing around with whatever happened. They cast 'doting' on Saeki's mother; they ended up getting plenty of cookies and candy that week, and the white haired boy was especially happy since his parents got along so much better after his mother'd served his father's favorite dishes and drinks. Another slip with 'enthusiastic' doodled on it found its way onto the school bus driver during a field trip, and the class spent a merry two hours receiving a hilarious guided tour of Kyoto, full of amusing misinformation; who knew that usually brooding old gip could be so creative? And then there was the talisman with 'guilty' that stuck onto the bottom of the class bully's shoe. Saeki thought he would die from lack of oxygen when he couldn't stop laughing each time the burly kid started bowing like crazy and saying sorry, sorry over and over again.
Really though, now that he was older Saeki realized that amplification was an understatement. It was more like the kankikujyunjou could create a totally different personality. The whole process was very mysterious, and while they didn't cause too much terror (they still felt a little guilty about playing with people's feelings, even though it was all in good fun), Saeki loved watching the magic at work.
He wasn't one to dwell in the past, but at times like these, watching the sky, he couldn't help but be overcome by memories. There were so many stories, so many pranks, he could write a whole book about them. Maybe someday he would.
Looking back made Saeki chuckle, feeling pleased with himself at all the mischief they had caused. Those were the good old days. He and that kid. . . the one with the blue eyes. . . and . . . and...What the hell! Why couldn't he remember that kid's face?
Well that was just wrong. Saeki never forgot faces. Names, yeah, once in a while, but his special talent had always been memorizing faces. There wasn't a face in his life he couldn't recall, and even random strangers he could usually remember after seeing them only once. The way the nose bent, how high the cheek bones were, the curve of the chin. . . the part of his brain that tracked the arrangement of facial features worked spectacularly well.
But all he could remember about his childhood best friend were his cerulean eyes and close lipped smile.
Glancing at the talisman in his hand, which he could have sworn had suddenly grown warm, he noticed that the paper was no longer blank. Instead, a scribbly looking kanji had appeared, one he couldn't read at all. He flipped it around and still he couldn't read it. He tried squinting, tried putting it away from his face, tried tracing the outline with his finger.
For a second, frustration crossed his chest and forehead, but hey, that caused wrinkles, and Saeki refused to dwell on anything upsetting. Tossing a smoothed stone into the incoming waves, he kicked up some sand and then settled back into cozy mattress of beach. Tucking the nostalgic paper back into his pocket, he decided not to think about it, and let things work out on their own.
Yawning, he muttered an "Oh well," then went back to watching the empty blue sky.
Atobe clicked off his cell phone with a dramatic flare. "He's not answering."
Fuji just shrugged, amusing himself by trying to catch falling leaves, all of which passed right through him. Well, amusing himself by watching Atobe oggle each time it happened. "Oh well, I wasn't expecting that much," the tensai said, keeping any fearful emotions out of sight. "I only thought of Saeki since you were talking about protective charms. I gave him quite a few when we were children and I'm pretty sure he caries one around. Though, they were made to catch any reflex from a curse, not a curse itself, and certainly not anything this powerful."
He swiped at a leaf, this time putting some spiritual energy into his hand so that he easily blew it off course.
"It's not as essential now," he continued, his normal smile fitting smoothly into place. "I mean, there's at least two poles so I'm temporarily stable."
"Ahn?" Atobe flicked back a piece of hair as if to frame the questioning arc of his nicely shaped eyebrows. "Explain. What are these 'poles' you refer to?"
"Poles are... hm..." Fuji paused and smiled at the sound of his own voice. Finally having someone to converse with filled him with pleasure, the comforting warmth of being seen and heard. "How should I explain?
"For this curse, a pole is a talisman that has my name written on it, since it's my name that's been forgotten. Anyone with this paper would be able to remember my name. The spell caster would definitely have such a pole, and thus I would be drawn to him like a magnet.
"But if there are at least two such talismans in different places, then I can travel anywhere between them. They act like poles holding a net, and the afflicted spirit can cross over the span of that net were it laid horizontally. . . oh! That's why I can travel from St. Rudolph where Mizuki is to Hyotei where you usually are. Seigaku's sort of between the two so I was able to be there as well." His smile broadened as he thought to himself, but my friends' caring also helped. . .
"Is that so," the wealthy tennis buchou smirked. "So someone had enough sense to name magical principles with tennis terms."
Fuji laughed. "Saa... I was told it comes from North Pole/South Pole and the compass that aligns between them, but I do like the tennis net analogy more myself." He cupped his hands behind his back, relishing in the warm sensation of his existence being acknowledged, if only by having someone listen to him and exchange words with him.
"So really, this tiny thing," Atobe pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, posing regally as he held it before his eyes with two slim fingers, "is all that stands between you and that walking fashion disaster from St. Rudolph." He turned it around. "Hmph, but all ore-sama sees is scribbles. Really, I am appalled that one of my family's associates has such poor hand writing. Though compared to ore-sama's beautiful cursive, all others' hand writing is poor indeed."
Again, Fuji failed to keep the amusement off his face. "That's not written in Japanese," he chuckled. "This is the language of onmyouji. Here - " he reached out and traced the talisman with his finger, focusing a little power through his hand. The scribbles seemed to twist, then straighten themselves, then curve into letters.
The kanji for Fuji Syuusuke appeared across the paper in perfect artistic strokes. Though as the transformation occurred, a deep frown crept into the tensai's face. Something about that talisman had felt familiar. . . and very wrong. . .
"So what would happen," Atobe's voice turned strangely whimsical, "if, say, this was to be torn up?"
Fuji paled slightly, his fingers digging painfully into his palms as his hands tightened into fists. "I suppose. . . I would be sent back to whatever pole remained, probably instantaneously. I don't really... I'm not a complete existence, right now, so I would be trapped with whoever still knew my name. You, then, would fo-forget me like everyone else." Years of practice enabled him to keep his smile tightly on his face.
"Hm..." An almost predatory smile stretched across the diva's face as he eyed the little white paper one last time before slipping it back into his pocked.
"Come," Atobe waved haughtily. "I have something to show you."
A/N: Whoa, I somehow managed to make it through, yay! That last part was a little forced (I had a lot of little pieces written here and there) but I hope it all makes sense. There's just so much to explain about this story... sorry about that. I'm making all of it up, I wanted to do research on Onmyouji but I couldn't even figure out where to begin, so in the end I just made up whatever was convenient. Don't take my word for anything!
I wish I could have thought of better pranks for Fuji and Saeki to have played - if you have any ideas (or experiences, fuufuufuu), let me know! I used an online source for the chemistry pranks, and the telephone prank comes from an article I read for one of my classes.
kankikujyunjou: this is just something I made up. I have no idea what this word would actually mean (hopefully not something too strange). I hope the explaination of what they do makes sense, they'll show up again later.
Review please! Tell me your feelings as you were reading ;; I hope I gave the impressions I was aiming for... This is my first and only real angst story. Reviews are inspiring! It's because of all the reviews I've gotten for this fic that I refuse to give up, even when I get horrible writers block.