X/1999 Fan Fiction ❯ Anachronism ❯ Anachronism ( Chapter 1 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Title: Anachronism- An X/1999 fic for Murasaki on her birthday.
Author: The Queen of Blueberry Toast [TheKWOBT@hotmail.com]
Fandom: X/1999
Rating: X, oddly enough

X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X

I.

Consider this...

Sumeragi Subaru sits on a swing. He is alone. It's April Thirtieth and you can
hear the sounds of the fireworks being set up for the evening show, but no
fireworks yet, it's still too early. Now and then- laughter. As the shadows grow
longer, it almost starts to look as if there are children darting in and out around
the juniper bushes, but the children who were here yesterday for the Greenery Day
festivities are long gone.

He watches something on the ground- something fluttering around and around
making little circles in the breeze. Like a wind chime. I'm sure if anyone walked
past just now they'd only see the fuda, not the illusory little girl. I can only
make out her outline myself. Lucky, lucky me, but it's getting late

I knock my arm against the trunk of the ginko I'm standing alongside and the
lanterns in it chime for they have wires underneath their paper shells. The girl's
shadow bows to him and goes away, and all because he took his eyes away from
her. I smile, and tip my hat before starting off. He doesn't follow me.

I guess even divine instruments of revelation can have vacations.


II.

...And also, this.

Fate... is something I can't do justice. Because I am Fate, and I am surrounded
by other people who are Fate.

Therefore, we can hypothesize from this peculiar situation that Fate has more than
one aspect, and that it is possible to switch from one to the other of us as easily
as a bored highschool girl changes the layout of her blog. Simple? Outwardly.
Complicated and bizarre? Of course! The Greeks were right, ergo things are about
to get messy.

This was before Subaru and his fuda.

I went into a Key Coffee for some mocha jelly, and I met another Fate sitting
under a lace curtain veil. He had a slice of strawberry cake he wasn't eating, so
I asked him why he didn't want it, since the strawberry cake at that chain caf‚ is
both divine and non-offensive.

Then I had to push him back into his chair.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Such language," I chided. I laughed. I took the seat across from him and
ordered real cream on my jelly. "I don't want anything of you this morning, and I
doubt you're in the mood to smash a building before noon, isn't that so, Kamui?"

Kamui didn't answer me right away, but he eyed his slice of cake as if he
seriously wished rather her he could murder it, since he could not murder me at
the moment.

"It's Golden Week though, isn't it? Everyone takes off during Golden Week.
Why not us, and only because we're lucky this place is open, frankly."

"What do you want."

Not a question, he just said it, and one of the waitresses whispered something that
sounded like "kare esu" under her breath. I didn't have time to ask if she meant
me or him, and the trail of rollicking highschool boys who came running past the
window didn't have time for anything. But oh, how Shirou-kun's violet eyes
trailed after them and away into the silver shards of the city.

"Envious, how cute!" I remarked to him then, having taken the first bite if my
jelly long ago. Oh, the look on his face, as if he thought eating was beyond me
somehow. But he didn't answer, just blushed and looked away from me with his
fork between his lush, little lips.

"What are you doing here...?"

"What are you doing with these?" Parried as best I could with the time between
then and the nibble he was wishing of his icing. I didn't even know what I was
pointing to at first, those photos he had fanned out under his napkin, but in
saying so, I took one.

Subaru was sitting on a swing with a fuda-girl dancing at his feet. At the time, I
didn't think anything of it, just sucked on my spoon and a memory most culpable
in my then wandering thoughts.

"You...!"

"How much do you want for these? I won't take them off you without paying you
first." In his ensuing silence, I returned the images to him, in a little ring
around his plate, and as if rather they were little crosses, and he a wight, he
drew away from them, and my pale hand in the morning light. "There now, don't
worry. He never was one to be like that when it came to me."

"But you...!"

"But what? Are you thinking what I'm thinking? That we're the same? Not... just
the two of us, but what happened almost ten years ago, and what happened before
the snow melted here? You, the other boy who used to jerk you off in the
bathroom, and the girl who trips over air? If you're not thinking of it, you
should. Give you something to keep yourself sharp during the holidays."

That was as long as I could stay to play with Kamui. After I vanished, he was
good enough to finish his cake and pay my tab.

X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X

I.

I decide to go see the fireworks, and why not? When I've little doubt they're the
very last I'll ever get to draw so near to. People shudder and rub the imaginary
dust from their shoulders once I've slipped past them, but the crowd otherwise is
thin and wispy-golden as champagne bubbles. The moon rose not too long ago,
though none of it has come sailing over the rooftops of Tokyo. No stars of
course, just circlets of pastel light around the little stands set up around the
park. I come up to the make-believe fence fairly easily, and fold my arms over
the top of it. There's a young business woman on one side of me, and an old man
on the other. While it seems like things should be the other way around, I have
a cigarette.

A whistle of ascent then, five minutes ahead of schedule. I guess no one else can
hear the technician's cursing, but I do and the single, silver bloom overhead must
know and so turns to a hundred little ash fishes in embarrassment. I can almost
feel the last smoldering fragments from the glistening fire on my skin, or almost
imagine them at least. Maybe that's just from my cigarette.

Time passes, more or less, and the old man beside me leaves to greet someone he
thinks he knows. Tiny footsteps. Quick, but unused to geta. There in the light-
shade of a sputtering lamp, a little girl now in a blue yukata dusted with gold;
she stares up at me, and letting my lips cradle my cigarette, I smile back, I
wave. She claps and claps and claps before the show has even started.

"Fushigi! I've ne'eeeeeeer seen anyone like you before! Where are you from?"
Heh, hardly ever hear children use that word anymore, fushigi. Not the way it's
meant to be, all lyrical and awed.

"Oh, I'm from the same place as everyone else, I've just... traveled."

"If I travel, will I get to be like you?"

"You can be like me any time you want." It's true! But just before she can blurt
out her next question...

"Momiji-chan? Doko desu ka?"

"Over here, Okaaaaaaasan, you won't believe what I found! You won't! It's
WIGGLY." Momiiji? No, not this time of year, so why not Ayame or Yuriko or
even Sakura? Because I guess that would be almost... too fitting. If there is such
a thing, and since there is no one lest to guess with me, I stare out over the
expanse of tiny lamps where the crowd has gathered, waiting for the tourbillions,
and the colored rain.

I'm not the only one with eyes seeking the opposite shore of this expanse of
people; this, friends, is too fitting. More than all the sakura that ever lived,
or famed themselves on having grown from dead souls. Kamui's eyes slip away
from mine though. Before the blue of the first breath of light can engulf him,
the crowd does. Blink of my eyes later and he's gone, and so is any trace of
that firework, mad with grief now that one slip of a palm has made her be second,
when she was meant to be Queen of the Festival Light.

There's only the sound of everyone but me clapping and whistling and calling
nonsense to the unsympathetic firmament, for the moon has risen now, looking
for her own subjects among the flurries just above us, and just below her.


II.

Kamui gets home after midnight, and I guess he must have been with Yuzihara all
night, because she's the only person I know who would ever give the antichrist a
goldfish- a little black and tangerine one too. And one so bright, even by the
misty gleam of the minute market down the street, I can still make out the patches
of color all along its rippling fins. It undulates and flips, this way and that,
anxious to see its new home, and that of the key its master is searching for. If
it even remembers it belong anywhere else in the world.

The little slip of metal sways between my fingers, "You dropped it back at the
fortune teller's booth, I figured you might want it back."

"You again?"

"That's not a very nice thing to say to an old friend," Somehow, we both shrug,
and the key sails higher and higher, toss by toss, until it nearly looses itself
against the shadows of the buildings all around us before falling into focus, and
back to where I'm waiting. "Show me those pictures one more time, and its yours
again. You at least owe me that for my trouble."

Time across time, there she is again, the shadow of the little girl, silhouetted
deep pink against the pale earth underneath the swings where the once upon a time
sunset begins and ends. Oh, how the swiftly swooning day has left traces of
herself all over your coat, Subaru, and the pixies stirred your hair. But you are
not one of them, not fragility there, no hatred of humanity just...

"Are you done?" Snaps Kamui and the goldfish jitters this way and that in his
cellophane cage, because the boy has waved has stamped his foot so hard.

The truth for you? Why not? "Almost. I just have one question, and you don't
even have to answer it. The look on your face is enough for me. So, how did you
get those photos? Because you see, you had them this morning, and our little
onmyoujutsu-chan didn't do anything like that until this afternoon. That means
one of two things, either he likes to go swinging a lot with only his pretend
friends as company, or the universe is slowly coming undone, right here, right
now, under our feet."

And the boy picks up his feet, gazing at the soles of his worn-out hi-tops. I can't
control myself, or I don't want to, in some ways. I laugh. He blushes at me, and I
run my fingers over the curls of raven-silk hair that trickle down around his ears.

"Given recent events, I'd say it's the latter. You agree! How wonderful. Well
then, Kamui-Not-Kamui-Once-Again, let me tell you this. It won't work if it's
just the two of you. You have to make things how they used to be, and then, what
you want." I tapped the captured image before me, no finger print left behind for
all the care I took in it. "Can not help but be yours."

Once I'm gone, the key rests in the middle of the street, right where it's just out
of reach from the sidewalk. The pictures start to slip, and underneath the one of
Subaru on the swing, is one of the same man, years younger, tucked down asleep
in a bed that isn't his.


III.

Across town, but scarce minutes after my leaving Kamui, I stand at a window I
know well, and that I don't remember at all. Sumeragi Subaru is fast asleep, with
his head under the pillow, making me think he must have gone to bed before the
fireworks began. He's naked, and the sheets are draped so low over him...

The window parts. I enter his chambers just to pull them up. And shut the blinds
so that once the cerulean sea of the evening recedes, he won't have to worry about
the sun waking him.

Goodbye, Subaru.

X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X

I.

When Kamui goes to fix himself a cup of tea the next morning, he sneaks down
the hall without his slippers on. Of course I'm not there with him, but Kasumi is.
He sees her like he sees through ghosts, but he doesn't say a word to her. Just
skips between the window glares supine upon the kitchen floor, and heads for the
refrigerator where yesterday's ocha is waiting patiently for him.

He, who startles Kasumi. She knocks her head on a cupboard and her coat slips
down form her shoulder. The fuscha strap of her bra smiles out at him. "Ohayo,
Kamui! Yuzihara-chan told me she gave you one of the fish she won last night, so
I came over to see it on my way to work. When I knocked, the door fell open."
Kasumi works during the daytime? How quaint for a soapu-jo...

"Well, I did forget to lock it," he says. His fingers skim the china in the drying
rack by the sink, and find an extra cup he doesn't quite remember having bought.
Without a word, he pours her a glass. Thanks said, she goes back to watching the
fish in its water glass home. "I'm not mad, it's my fault."

"Well, seems like I should tell you to be more careful, but that seems silly.
Besides, I'd rather tell you to get your little fishie a plant or something!"

For now, all it has is the tip of her French manicured nails, and it nibbles them
her and there, lips kissing the paint on the underside over and over, until she
tut-tuts it, turns back to her tea, which with a wave of her hand begins to steam
as though it were fresh. "A pretty blue plastic plant!"

"I was thinking more along the lines of a bowl."

"A bowl would be nice too."

"Hey, Kasumi?"

"Mn?"

"Aa... happy Golden Week."

"Why thanks! Same to you."

And then they talk about fireworks before she scurries off, sounding every bit the
white rabbit, while there are no rabbits left in her Tokyo, not really.


II.


Once she has gone, Kamui taps on the side of his fish's home, and reaches into
the half-empty box of pokey tucked in the back of his bare pantry. Inside is a
picture of Subaru with an silvery-black umbrella over his shoulders instead of
wings. This time, he's facing the place where the camera should be, and I guess
that's why Kamui gasps so softly when he sees is.

Taking the edges of the image in both hands, he draws it close as it cam be, and
presses his lips to the emulsion.


III.

Later in the afternoon, rain. The wind sings between the shattered frames of glass
that have broken from their cages of iron between earthquakes. There are still
shards around the sidewalks, here and there, where sweepers have left them, but
people walk over them, (catch them in their shoes), just the same, laughing and
shouting in the downpour, not because its raining, but because rain doesn't matter
today, or any days this week.

Sumeragi Subaru pauses an insistent between a gale and a pair of cosplayers
chasing each other down with Sculpy scythes. Umbrella in one hand, he wipes
the water droplets from the surface of a store window. Behind is the cheery-child
glamour of a highschool girl boutique, and a display of bracelets and necklaces,
all made of great, big, faceted Lucite beads. In every color of the rainbow. The
one he's looking at has a mint green star in the center of a chain of lavender
circlets.

His fist meets the light dancing through the pain, not there, but its almost as if
he's trying to block out the sight of it without letting anyone know what he's
trying not to see. Why won't he just walk away? Because walking away would be
too easy.

And on the other hand, once he's checked his wallet, he goes into the store, which
is too crowded for me. No, I'd rather watch him as the only creature nearby; not
share his field of gravity with singing sparrow girls. He points to the window,
and the necklace is as good as his. Then his at last, and he leaves the boutique,
the gold foil box for his trinket clasped so tightly in one hand, his skin begins
to grow damp against it. This, while he looks at the thing as if he doesn't know
what it is. Soon, it takes its place in his pocket instead of his yen, and a
glance at the street sign makes him wonder which way to go.

A cigarette from his just now opened pack later, he heads down a road he hardly
knows, and comes to wait at a murmuring iron gate that's just barely visible from
the main road.

A bell rings and he starts, fingers starting after his fuda, but a sigh, and he does
remember. Sorcerers do go to school, sometimes, like regular people.

Not long later, Kamui comes sprinting through the puddles that have bloomed
under the wall and its half-veil of wilting lavender. He has his bag over his head,
and his tie is a mess. When he sees Subaru, he brassily calls his name and races
under the umbrella, his sneakers sliding on the wet cement as he tries to stop. He
almost falls into the onmyoujutsu's arms, but only the edges of their clothes
brush, hardly making a sound, even as he rights himself, and almost smiles up at
his companion; without fear, meeting his single, glaucous eye.

"Hi," Subaru says, "I told you it would rain, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did, but I forgot."

"And the school forgot to give you off too, I suppose?"

"We only get a few of the days, not the whole week."

"I see." Subaru's black wings shake with some new and unexpressed sentiment
about the shower, maybe he just feels, or maybe he really remembers. But he
turns away from the boy and beckons.

"Y-you're walking me home."


IV.

Somewhere in time, by the seaside of recollection, and a real ocean where angels
tumble into the waves and leave their hearts there, a Sumeragi Subaru takes his
sister's hand, and even through the deluge that's ruined their vacation, they come
scampering down the shore as if it was full and proper daylight, as if the sun had
come out in a halo around them, and left the an, encompassing shade for everyone
else. The stones between the glassy sand are slippery, and Hokuto nearly falls.
She catches herself in the end though, and Subaru too, because he's stumbled
reaching for her hand.

"Baka!"

"Aw, don't call me that, you're the one who fell."

"Well, one of us did, and if it was me, than you must have done it while being me,
because I don't remember."

A sigh.

A pout. She jumps, joins the raindrops, and they dart up all around the twins' feet
for one last second time. "Keep it up or we'll both fall into the sea and be eaten
by mermaids. CHOMP CHOMP!"

"Mermaids don't eat people, people are supposed to eat mermaid skin."

And then, for no reason at all, he kisses her hand, and she blushes. They both
laugh, and the fractured sea laughs, and the birds will as soon as the sky is clear
again.

But there are no slits in the milk glass vault over Tokyo, and Subaru is gathered
up in a crowd waiting for a light to change when he feels a hand slide up and
down the back of his white coat. Since he and the boy are at the very end of the
gathering, no one has seen but his thoughts. As Kamui smiles sherbet soft at him,
he pretends the eye he keeps is blind, and walks just before the flickering of the
sign everyone is watching as if it rather knew the words of God. Neither he, not
the boy he is escorting let their expressions change, but the umbrella starts
shifting this way and that, forcing the younger of the two to always be watching
the shadow it doesn't have, to keep up with it, or to be wet again.

As much hopscotch as he plays there, his hair is still speckled with momentary
topaz-grey water. I wonder what it would be like to touch now, and draw close
enough to try, but the umbrella, unaware of me still, leads him away. Subaru sees
nothing, but Kamui looks at me for a moment, smitten and pavid.

"Is it because you think you remind me now, that I will want to find out how your
hair feels like this way?"

But he doesn't answer me, and it's not his hair I want to remember after all. It
isn't anything like that part of my mind, those touches scarcely since reborn...

But they've come to his door now.

"Thank you, Subaru."

"Iyee," and a shake of his head later, he has pushed Kamui into his house, twirled
the black wings, and with a nod, slammed the door between them. Sitting on the
kitchen table just now is a murex shell. Silver, with baby-pink undersides to its
spines.


X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X

I.

Kasumi has a crystal carousel on her bookshelf- one where all the tiny horses
aren't horses at all, but rather hippogrifs and unicorns and demons more beautiful
than even she is. (I can appreciate her, if only because she is there to be
appreciated.) It starts to spin a little every evening at eight fifteen when the
train passes near her apartment, and tonight, the innermost wheel goes around just
once. Someone knocks for a second time, and she answers the door, still in her
costume from work.

She's dressed as a mermaid- shiny opalescent cellophane starfish about her
breasts, and a tail of clear chiffon hanging from her thong. Plastic bubbles dangle
all round her hair. She's wet- her bangs, and the rims of her netherlips. Kamui
doesn't say anything at first seeing her like this.

"Kom ban wa! I was just about to change and make dinner. Would you like some
ramen? I can put two packs on!"

"Ah... actually, that would be nice."

Like a lord to a lady, she bows and swims off to the kitchen, humming an old Boa
song along the way. Her guest, a puppy, follows her and sits on the counter rather
than any of the chairs. Neither of them had turned on any lights except the
reading lamp in the living room, so she begins to cook by streetlights and sunset
shards alone.

Still almost in tune with the melody she wrought moments before, "So, what
brings you here? I know you didn't just come for the ramen."

"I just... had to ask you something. Something weird."

"Oh, I deal with 'weird' all day, you don't have to be shy to men. I mean..." and
a wave here to the outfit Kamui's trying not to look at. But he does, and he
wonders when he sees it again how it ever bothered him before. Suddenly, he
can't know her as anything besides the mermaid before him.

Suddenly, he doesn't want to. "Are you going to do this all of your life?"

"Are you going to do this all of your life?" Not a question of a question, but she's
asked him the same thing he asked of her. They nod, in unison.

"Until I fade away," she tells him. "Until I'm not even an old whore, but a see-
thru whore that everyone walks through. And you?"

"As long as I can."

I, myself, can stay no longer and listen to this. I slip out the front door, and
behind me, the carousel spins, as if its trying to follow me.


II.

Coming back long after sunset and just before morning, I find they're still awake,
and a few of the lights are on now. It's still dim in Kasumi's house, and her robe
does her no better than her fish tail.

"But what if," her guest, now drowsy with sake begins, "I wanted to do something
just a little bit different? What if I wanted something...?"

"You can still have it, but for heaven's sake, Kamui! Don't ever change! There's
not time enough to change in this life! Not really! Not for us and fate and... all
those other things. Just want, want so much the world changes for you, not that it
can change, but want so much you do what can only be already told."

"Fate sucks," says the bottom of the olive green glass bottle where the rice wine
used to be. A few drops fall out of its lips and splatter down the boys face,
running all the way down his cheeks and onto the collar of his shirt, and his tie
there, still not tied quite right. About a minute passes before he realizes no
one's answered him, and no one's going to. The mermaid has fallen asleep on the
rug, far under the shade of the crystal carousel. He gives it a spin, getting to
his shaky feet.

I make my way into the apartment then, and whisper to him, even though the
sheltering darkness is bound to keep the lady of the house asleep even longer than
her drinks. "Oh, wouldn't it have been nice to tell her that both of you are fate,
echoes of something that used to be? Hokuto used to have a mermaid costume
you know. She would chase him all over the shop in it, telling him she'd eat him
all up."

"Oh leave me the hell alone."

He walks and walks through the space I should be, too many steps because the
liquor's made him soft and fluffy inside. When he makes it back to Kasumi's
bedroom, the ceiling fan comes on with the lightswitch before the light, and
underneath is just and ordinary bedroom, with a bright yellow comforter doll
between two pillows. One by one he goes through the drawers, the cupboards in
her nightstand- they're all full of Ribbon comics and Police CDs... nailpolish,
china frogs and finally, what he's been searching for...

He tries sucking on the clear blue dildo first, just the tip, mouthing around the
rim that should be running around it in his imagination, though there isn't one of
course, just a shallow crescent of plastic, completely smooth. His tongue slides
along the underside as he holds it with his hands cupped just like he was trying to
drink from them. Then lips, this way and that over it, a joy he can't even seem to
measure himself swaying over his face now and then. After awhile, he gives the
sheets that aren't his a look, careful not to let his teeth graze the make-believe
lover he's pushed all the way into his throat by now.

A shrug.

Flopping down on the mattress, he gags a little, having jostled himself a little
inside. The plastic comes out of his mouth then, and he watches his saliva slide
down it. The last train or the first train, its hard to say, but one passes then,
and he clings to the bed before tumbling down on it. Belly down, he crawls out of
his trousers, leaving them behind the way a butterfly abandons a chrysalis. There's
no pause before he flies though. Up on his knees and not the least bit aroused, he
pushes the dildo in with one slow skid. His knuckle pops under the strain of his
teeth on his hand, but he rides the thing, lung by lunge, until he has a just
barely rosy erection. Then it comes out, and again he looks at what has just
reached into him, eyes so far away.

At last, he folds himself up, and feet about his toes now, rubs himself on the
cotton sheets and his own fingers until he climaxes.

A quick, half-clothes trip into Kasumi's shower, and he comes out, goes for his
discarded clothing, and changes his mind.

The blue dildo, a little glycerin soap across it now, he sits on until he's
completely pierced, goes to look at himself in the mirror like this. And he
stares.


III.

The fish has something else to kiss now. There are little azure leaves all around
it, and it lives in a glass bowel filled with glass beads at the bottom. Kamui is
speechless, but the flips of the fish's tail make the creature more articulate
than he at this moment.

"My daughter had a pair of goldfish for a long time when she was little. They
died a few weeks ago, and she's sworn since she'll never love another fish or two
like she did them. Poor Tenchi and Ryoko, but anyway, all of their things were
just going to waste in our closet, so I brought them over."

"Arigatou."

Seiichirou gives his host a thumbs up before he raps on the edge of the glass
bowl. The fish, who isn't Tenchi or Ryoko flees right into its own wall. "It's
not all that much, don't look so embarrassed."

"It's not that, just... Kasumi said she thought it should have a BLUE plant and
now it has one."

"Is that so?" Little chuckles then, but the fan running on the hallway finally
manages to take away one of the papers that's been left on the kitchen table. As
it comes close to my face, I blow it back almost to where it's supposed to be.
They both dive for it, and instead of an apology, "Well, I'd defer to Kasumi's
judgement then! If she says blue, blue it is! Have you ever been in her apartment?
Pretty!"

Kamui sort of nods, but catches himself at the last, and starts stepping away
again, casting his gaze this way and that over his guest.

"Not for the reason you think! She's friends with my wife! They... lend each
other... things."

Coughs! Blushes. The fish can't blush of course, but it gives the look of wishing
it could.

"So, anyway, you enjoy now! I have to run though, Subaru's asked me to look at
some papers he's turned up in his attic or something, some poems."

Once Seiichirou has bas briefcase and his untidy folders back in his hands, he
stretches, and his shirt untucks itself from his pants, letting his stomach peep
out. He doesn't seem to care.

"Just a second!"

"Mmm?"

"Could you tell Subaru I'm sorry?"

"Sure! Ja ne."

No asking why, just a nod, and he goes hopping out the door, in plenty of time for
wherever he's going, or at least pretending he is. Kamui watches him as long as
he can, before the twisting side streets and the people coming from one complex
or another drown him out, and the distant shell of the train station has made them
all pale specs of color against its whiteness that consumes the end of the road.
Running back inside once someone has noticed his gaze, he reaches into the
pokey box. There's nothing there, not even pokey, and falling back on the
photograph he made love to with his lips... nothing there but the marks of his skin
on shiny black.


IV.

"...so, now that he's gone, I thought... it was more or less the best time to try
and... figure these out. They're all I have."

Seiichirou looks up from the plumes of papers pushing into each other around the
table he's sharing with Subaru. The waitress who called one of us- Kamui or I -
pretty under her breath isn't there to-day. Small wonder I suppose. I guess they
can't afford to close. Outside today is neither cloudy nor clear, but the sky seems
yellow, and the clouds azure, like just after a storm, but more peaceful still. It
hasn't rained at all since Subaru had wings, and now he hasn't even got his coat
on...

Seiichirou doesn't say anything out about his reasons for bringing them together
that day, his companion though, hits his spoon against the edge of the dish where
his coffee jelly is sitting, never seeming more or less than half eaten though he's
been picking at it all afternoon. "I ah... can't read them. I figured since you're
an editor maybe...?"

"Oh, I'll do my best! You wouldn't mind if maybe I got my wife to help me
though?" He doesn't mind. "She's better at making these things out than me, She
can even read my own writing back to me sometimes when I can't. It's the curse
of people in my profession- illegibility of our own doing."

This is greeted with a sort of happy look that defies any word close to 'smile'.
Something no word exists for, almost telepathic, but not so ravishing- something
calm, something fatalistic and ultimately saturnine. "It's OK if you can't figure
them out. I understand."

"No no! I can do it! I know I can! See? Right here, this one... that someone who
wasn't be got whipped cream on a long time ago... it says... the title is... I think
it's a title." His glasses come off, and without them to help, he ends up sitting
them in the dish of sugar packets. "Well, it says 'Boku wa kimi desu'... no, that
can't be right!"

But across from his is a deep, arresting silence now, and no Subaru at all.
Donning his glasses again, Seiichirou still can't really find the man who brought
him to the caf‚ today, or anyone remotely like him. There's only a boy with his
bangs run up away from his forehead as he leans down to catch his breath.

"Saa, Subaru...?"

"I... I never knew she wrote it down."

"Do you remember this poem then?"

"Boku wa kimi desu/To anata wa atashi da/Kimi kundasai/Anata Boku
hoshigaru/Itsumo onegai/Boku wa kimi desu."

Subaru's companion whistles then, and claps with the paper still in his hands,
because he likes what he's heard, and because it's exactly what his eyes tell him
was written over a decade ago- purple in on hello-kitty notebook paper. "Is all of
your sister's poetry like this?"

"No, just that one. She wrote it for a joke one day when we were at the beach and
it rained."

[What you just read is a gender-bending version of "I am you/and you are
me/please give me you/you desire me/always please/I am you.]


V.

"I know you were in my room the other night. That you went through...
everything you usual do."

Kasumi's fast asleep, sake again. Subaru says all of this to me, watching through
the faded portal of his bedroom mirror, as I stand just behind his open door,
watching him and nothing more. Unless you count meeting his eyes in a space
that doesn't even really exist. I could always turn around, but I wouldn't be so
much as a shadow by then...

"That you're here..." he goes on, sighing now. "But you won't talk to me."

I smile, and smooth the front of my reflected shirt, the reflected fuda what was
once my onmyoujutsu-chan is holding. "I could get rid of you right now, but it
seems silly knowing you'll eventually fade, and people will walk through you, if
they can't already."

My nod disarms his completely, and for a second, again this afternoon, there, the
child I adored more than my own life. Not the creature who fell into me in the
train station, not the one whose hands I marked as my own, but the one who, with
eyes green as green could ever be when made of mortal flesh, looked up through
the dead creature I was holding so many moments ago, and saw only me just so
he could speak. To whom there was no ugliness, no pain, no heaven, hell or
Elysium stars where calla flowers bloom. Just... present.

And in turn, this makes me speak.

"What can I say to you that you don't already know? It's true now, what she
wrote. For her and you. For you and me. Now! Go fall in love with yourself,
I'm waiting for him. I've made my peace with you..."

If I had breath to swallow, I would, but for now... "...beloved."

The front door slams open. Footsteps. Someone didn't bother to take their shoes
off on the way in. Subaru's eyes leave mine for a fraction of a second, and that's
enough. This time, it's true. I'm gone, or as close to gone as I can be from him.
On the other side of the panel that keeps the bedroom from the rest of the
apartment now... Kamui. Soaking. It's raining again, just in the moments I had
started to talk. The window rings, and the boy shimmers now all over.

"They're gone! They're all gone!" he cries.

"Huh?"

"I said I was sorry! Didn't Seiichirou tell you? I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm so tired
of being sorry, but I am! I AM, SUBARU!" And when he's coughed all he had to
cough. "Sorry for everything I ever did wrong. Don't take this away from me!"

Bewildered still, the sorcerer tears his eyes away from the glass, and casts his
gaze on something that still cares to exist as he turns around. "Wait a second!
Wrong? What have you done wrong?"

"I tried... I wanted... Subaru! Ever since... ever since you came after me when
Kotori died? Didn't you even NOTICE I was doing everything I could to try an'
make you SEDUCE ME!?"

"Seduce you!?"

Kamui shakes his head, gets the rain in his hair all over the wall. Takes a few
lurching steps forward. Like a good little fate, buries his amaranth eyes in his
hands and moans about this and that- spitting on fools and dancehalls and streets
and seashores...

And then, only the rain. The waves of passing cars, and that sound only assassins
and lovers care to notice in this world; skin on clothing as Subaru wraps himself
all around the boy before him, letting the water on his skin run between them, be
squeezed to the floor. Resting his head on those raven locks.

Though he can't be anything but warm, his visitor begins to shiver, and stammer.

"Silly Kamui! Don't you know you have to tell me you're in love with me before
I seduce you?"

"That's just IT! I CAN'T do that! I want to more than anything, but I CAN'T!
There's nothing right about telling you that! I DO! But how could I EVER...
after... after what you..."

The embrace ends with a push, two pushes, one against the other, all the way to
the two sides of the room, where the boy wobbles on his toes, and Subaru crosses
his arms, uncrosses them, and lights a cigarette instead, just daring him to
speak...

"Well, if you won't say it, I will. Kamui, I love you. I would like nothing
better in the world than to be seduced by you. It's true, I'm alone in the world
now but..."

Wispers that before no name would speak, no world. One has been said here, and
one not, and now they are spoken together before ever really choosing to exist
again. "But what about Hokuto and Kotori?"

Tears. They almost fade into the last of the rain, and there no sound with them,
but they're really, and their not all for one of them.

"What about everyone else in the world?"

"Well..." And softly now, nothing more. "What if the universe started slowly
coming undone, right here, right now, under our feet? What if... you were so
much me it frightened me sometimes before I fell asleep? What if we had pictures
of this before it happened, so we were just acting it all out? And they could be-
right here, right now, -no matter what? Just because I said so. And as much as I
wanted to forget, that made everything all the more clear."

Two fuda pick themselves up from the surface of Subaru's dresser, float like
dragons and like birds along the paths of his fingers as he reaches them out after
everything, not nothing. Not this time. They're a double helix, they're a Celtic
knot and two platforms on a carousel before two shadows on the floor- one that
looks like Subaru's shadow almost, one with wild, wet hair like a mermaid just
turned human. I can't see them, but they dance and dance and dance there in the
middle of the room, between two men entranced. Then they kiss and vanish into
each other's embrace as the place where they were wheeling grows smaller and
smaller, and three eyes leave them alone- falling to the floor, neither one atop
the other. And neither one in shadow.


I.

Seiichirou and his wife are turning more heads than the Queen of the Festival
Light. She's got on his haori, and he, her Yukata with a chain of giant, Lucite
beads around his neck: purple circlets with a single mint green star set in the
center. They daughter is dancing around their feet, too busy to notice me. They
keep calling two names, over and over...

In the lonely corner of the park where the swings used to me... I've been gone the
past few days, and never will find out what's become of them, are myself, and my
beloved. Myself is unarmed, and my beloved armed only with the thorns on the
rose he clutches in his right hand. Though that, in time- this last day of Golden
Week, falls to the ground. And now his hands are fitted together, close about his
lover's waist. My waist, but not me. My kisses all around his juicy lips, but not
mine, dipping into his warm, wet mouth.

Tonight, at midnight, the world will start again, and timespace sew itself up.
But for now, I am alone, I am with the only thing that was left for me to care
about. And yet... this is no mirror, no surface of the sea. And I have never
tasted mermaid flesh.

So I just watch them. And I'm nothing but content... and...

And that's the last I see of them together.

X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X-*-X

Owari

I know I had brought Kaori up in the working summary for this story but... MEH!
Why have a wussy anime heroine when there's a perfectly good anti-heroine right
there! Besides, a wise man once said, "A story just isn't a story without a few
whores!"

Calla flowers and Elysium stars are references from Legend of Syrius. Symbols
of the unattainable.