Tokyo Babylon Fan Fiction / X/1999 Fan Fiction ❯ Something to See ❯ Chapter 1

Something To See

It was a dream. Well, of course it was...the only thing in Kakyou's life that was worth living for was this. Maybe not dreams, per se, but the dreams where she was.

"You're late!" she teased.

"Yes. Interrogation by my parents."

"So leave."

To Hokuto, everything seemed to be just that simple. And, not a dream went by where she would not tell him that he should go.

"Hokuto-san...."

"Don't get formal with me now, Kyou-chan. You keep putting me further away, every time I tell you this." She pouted, but an instant later she was smiling again. "Come with me."

He just looked away sadly. It was not that easy. He'd tried to explain, and she berated him for making excuses and accused him of not thinking a girl like her was worth it. He always always always denied that, but even still she would not listen. Now he no longer tried. "I want to."

She sighed, looking at him with no small amount of exasperation. "But, you're not going to." Hokuto then shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. She looked him up and down, seeming to come to a decision. "I have something for you."

"How can you have something for me? We're not really here."

The landscape around them, as they talked, had become the usual beach that Hokuto had shared with him. It got more detailed with each visit, and now Hokuto grabbed his hand and pulled him along in a new direction. A tree stood there, tall and majestic, but with plenty of strong branches down low.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Climb in it."

"Why?"

She just laughed and started climbing. "Come on, it's fun. It will give you a new perspective."

Ah, so that was the symbolism of the tree. Now that he understood he was more accepting of it. He watched carefully how she put one foot on a branch and pulled herself up by grabbing another. It looked simple enough...but, this was a dream, so for him of course it was.

They climbed until Hokuto gave a satisfied nod and called a halt. "These look perfect. See? They're shaped just right to sit in." There were two branches, rather close to each other, that split and twisted upward. She sat comfortably in crook of the branch and leaned against it, lounging in her seat. Kakyou did the same, and though it wasn't the most comfortable place to sit he knew that he would spend time here in the future just because it was Hokuto who showed him this tree.

He looked around, but the canopy of leaves obscured everything. "If I can't see anything, how do I get a new perspective?"

"Don't you know everything that's out there already?" she asked as she leaned further back and closed her eyes. "It's your dream after all. I'm just a guest."

"I thought you wanted to show me something."

She grinned. "I just did." She looked over at him, now lounging in the tree and smiling like she knew some great cosmic secret and was about to impart that wisdom. "No matter how high off the ground you can get, if you wrap yourself up and hide from the world you will never see anything."

"That's okay. It's nice here with you."

She threw something at him...a leaf. It wasn't very effective, of course, but it seemed to get the point across. It was the action that mattered, not the result. "I can't be here all the time," she said, sounding irritated. Well...she sounded a little flattered also, but mostly just irritated.

"Then, I'll make the leaves go away when you're not here," he said, laughing.

Hokuto smiled sadly, and looked away. "I have to wake up soon. I've been researching an important spell lately."

Kakyou leaned toward her. "Hokuto-chan, I do see the world from here. I see so much of it, of the future, that I don't know if I ever want to see more."

"It's not all like that though," she said.

"Then, maybe some day I will. It won't be easy."

"It's okay, Kyou-chan. I have to go. Good luck with the future."

He thought that was a strange thing for her to say as she faded away. He leaned back in the tree for a few moments longer before he returned to what he thought of as his "working" dreamscape. He saw the black mirror spread across the "floor" of his mind, and he let the visions come.