Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ The Complements ❯ The Empiricist ( Chapter 2 )

 

The Empiricist

 

 

249*

 

Wild Nights—Wild Nights!

Were I with thee

Wild Nights should be

Our luxury!

 

Futile—the Winds—

To a Heart in port—

Done with the Compass—

Done with the Chart!

 

Rowing in Eden—

Ah, the Sea!

Might I but moor—Tonight—

In Thee!

 

I had propped my Guide to Classic American Poetry textbook behind my sewing machine so that I could glance over at the pages. The best way to get an essay done was to immerse one's self in the text. In other words, while I tailored a pair of slacks, the idea would simply come to me and I would add another A to my school records. Emily Dickenson would have seen the sense in it.

 

At first I barely recognized a hard knock at the door over the methodical click-n-clack of the sewing machine. Curious, I eased my foot off of the petal. Could it be the landlord? I had taken care to leave the monthly rent in his mailbox.

 

Instinctively, I sliced the end of the thread loose and tossed the pants over one shoulder. “Futile—the Winds/To a Heart in port” I muttered to myself. The door, swollen from the humidity stuck when I turned the handle. “Done with the compass,” I reminded myself and yanked the door forward. With the doorknob still in my hand, I stared at the boy on my doorstep.

 

“I want more,” he stammered at me. At that point, I lost my place in the poem and the whole world went to hell. `No, that's not the right line,' I meant to say to him. `It goes like this:'

 

I should have closed the door on him. That would have been the sensible move. But instead, I left the door open and retreated back into the dark hall. As if groping for a crutch, I grasped at my desk chair and swiveled back to my sewing machine where I was safe. I heard him follow me and stand somewhere behind me. It was a ridiculous situation, to say the least, from the look on his face to my blue and white plaid boxers. I rethreaded the machine that I had dislodged in my haste.

 

It took a long time for him to speak. “Ishida, come on, say something,” he pleaded me. His open emotions were caustic and I recoiled, huddling up to my sewing machine. I lowered the presser foot and began hemming an edge.

 

“I'm sorry to bother you so late-” he told me.

 

It was obvious that he was not because he was right here at this moment, his eyes tearing into the back of my head. Why had he come here? Was it sex? No, this was an act of desperation and I was not accustomed or prepared to deal with emotions such as that.

 

“-I just had to see you,” he managed to say. “And it had to be now. If it was any later, then I'd go crazy.”

 

There was a long pause that gaped between the two of us. Slowly, I felt myself regaining my composure. And so I told him this:

 

“Kurosaki, it's eleven-thirty. I already let you into my house. If you have something to say, which I know you must, then now is the time to say it. Our Dickenson test is tomorrow and I can tell you that neither of us had prepared the necessary amount. But, obviously you believe that this is more important, so I'm eager to hear your explanation.”

 

I had done it. There always lurked a belief in my mind that, if the problem- specifically the Kurosaki problem- wasn't addressed, then it would solve itself in time. But since the moment that I had recognized him, fate had set its path out before us. I was destined to fight the Hollows with him. I was destined to compete with him. I even believed that I was destined to let him in my house- twice. But there is no destiny in emotion for it is within emotion that the human mind can free itself from its fate. And the lack of emotion was my key to resisting the magnetic forces that Ichigo seduced us all with. I was determined not to become part of his ant farm.

 

*Emily Dickenson's poem `249.'