Disclaimer: I don't own GW or SM.
After a very long hiatus, I return to … start a new story. x I am working on My Paper Heart and Everything Golden and everything else, I swear!! Or … I will be. : Don't give up on my yet!! This is merely something that had caught my interest yet again.
This was actually a challenge I had presented to Liquid Ice a while ago but seeing that she will most likely not be pursuing it, I've picked it up again due to an extreme fondness for the premise. Let me know what you guys think:
Happy Thanksgiving, minna-sama.
"If I could have one thing … I think I would like to experience everything once and then forget it all."
He still remembered the afternoon when she said that, the wan sun gamboling among the leaves overhead. Her head had been upon his shoulder as they both leaned against the trunk in unspoken contentment. He remembered the teasing scent of her shampoo, the blonde wisps of hair framing her face, the fringed eyelashes half-covering her cerulean eyes, the certainty of the ground beneath him, the optimism of the cloudless sky—
But more than anything, he remembered the unrelenting contrast between her nonchalant tone and the gravity of her statement. He remembered the unforgiving contrast between the warm intimacy of her voice less than a foot from his ear and the frigid cynicism of her words. He remembered…
"Why would you say that?" The words stuck at his throat and desiccated before making their way out into the winter sunlight, husks of what they used to be.
Usagi was silent for a moment before glancing up at him and lifting her head from his shoulder. "It would make life easier, don't you think? To have the pleasure or pain of experiencing everything but not remembering the pain to regret it or the pleasure to miss it." At his solemn gaze she laughed a little and cocked her head; the sunlight caught her eyes and made them flash unearthly silver as if inside she was nothing more than ice and snowflakes. "You don't agree? Come, you have to at least admit that it's a pretty daydream."
"I'm not sure I would like to forget anything even if given the chance."
She laughed again, brushing his unease off as easily as if it were the ignorant concerns of an unschooled child. Pulling away, she smiled up at him and replied, "Oh, don't look so stern, Hiiro. I'll never forget you. I couldn't if I tried."
He remembered leaning back with muted relief, remembered the wind picking up and fingering through his dark brown hair until strands obscured his storm blue eyes, remembered her brushing them away with cool, slender fingers, remembered thinking: and every time I try to say 'I love you,' the words die in my throat. 1
But most of all, he remembered those four words she had uttered on a whim: I'll never forget you.
"If there is one thing you could forget—"
Her companion's liquid laughter pierced the muffled warmness of the café; the couple in the next booth started and smiled in recognition of the cheery sound before returning to their private world of rose leaves and mistletoe. "Only one? Oh, don't make this so hard, Ami."
Ami smiled a little and paused to stir her hot chocolate while seeming to contemplate the shoppers rushing by, trampling the day-old snow. "No, really, Usagi. One thing you can forget; what would you choose?"
The blonde shrugged in a cavalier manner characteristically hers and followed Ami's gaze. "My job, definitely. I think I'd like to forget that my reputation is an issue and that I need daddy's money to survive." A slight frown marred her childlike features as she watched the pedestrians bustle by. Was there really only a month left before Christmas? How does time fly by so quickly?
"Work with me, please, Usagi."
Usagi sighed in the face of Ami's severe gaze. "Fine, fine. Let me think." She paused and peered into her coffee as if it could signal to her the answer. "I'd like to forget about my parents."
Ami's azure eyes flashed upwards. "Your mother?"
"My mother specifically, yes." Usagi paused again and seemed to assess her answer before nodding confirmation and asking, "Why?"
The brunette leaned in for the kill. "What if I told you that I can help you forget the one thing that you want to forget the most?"
"I'd say you're my best friend and you shouldn't be messing with me," Usagi shot back easily.
"It's true. I can do it." Ami hesitated before continuing, "But only one thing. And it's irreversible."
Usagi was silent, the soft light of artificial lamps casting a faintly romantic glow on her features, dulling the cerulean of her irises and minimizing the emerging circles under her eyes. As Ami finished her hot chocolate, Usagi bit her lip and contemplated the question. "If I could forget one thing…" she hesitated as if afraid to proceed past the ledge and into the boundless ocean of not only possibilities but also fears, uncertainties, hallucinogenic visions of sweet escape.
Ami still remembered the skim of ice that seemed to frost over Usagi's eyes, still remembered the serenity that settled over Usagi's delicate features, still remembered the way her vision seemed to turn inward to a heart that was still surrounded by glacial pillars..
And then was the answer that she never expected to hear in the whole duration of her life.
There was a smattering of confused applause as Usagi paused, hesitated, and started over on Glasgow Love Theme, her fingers pressing into the notes with less certainty, meeting the resistance of the keys' weight; the song became distorted in tempo. Several people looked up in mild annoyance, but neither Usagi nor Hiiro, watching her from their table, noticed. 2
She stopped again midway, seemed to sigh in defeat, and lowered the lid of the sleek Yamaha grand before sitting back down with him for dessert. "Thank goodness I was never a musician."
"Something the matter?"
"Not at all," she smiled, "except that desert was a little late in coming."
Hiiro mirrored her smile albeit a bit more reservedly. When he looked up again, he caught her staring at him with adoration mixed with something else he couldn't identify. In retrospect, he concluded it must've been sorrow because he felt certain it couldn't have been joy or guilt or – premonitory regret.
"You still amaze me every time you smile," she offered in explanation and laughed when he frowned in response. "I'm glad that I made a difference in your life, Hiiro."
"So am I," he murmured into his tiramisu, but she never heard those words. And even if she had, she wouldn't have remembered them.
"Good afternoon, Hiiro," she said as she entered the room, the previous staccato and sterile tapping of her heels on linoleum muffled by the transition to carpeting. She lowered her voice until it was almost intimate, as if they were merely sitting down to chat about sepia memories over hot chocolate in cutesy mugs.
But instead there was a cup of ice water in front of him offered by the butler, and they were here to chat about something far, far more important.
"Mizuno."
"Ami," she corrected, her lips pulling up almost imperceptibly as if she found his gravity amusing. "Please call me Ami."
"Ami."
She nodded as if encouraging the development of the habit and shifted a little in the exquisite Rococo-esque chair she pulled up to the reading table. He pursed his lips and felt a thousand times more uncomfortable in the similarly styled chair as if afraid that it was too delicate to bear the weight of his body, of his thoughts.
"How do you like this room? Several of my friends helped me design it. It holds … a number of valuable texts and a number of priceless secrets." She gazed about appreciatively as she said this, the thinnest film of nostalgia diluting the blue of her eyes. Sighing, she settled her elbows on the table and tucked a stray strand of short, auburn hair behind her ear. "Maybe now's not the best time to be admiring my library." She smiled as if in conciliation. "I thought some conversation would lighten the mood, but clearly you are not to be deterred from your goal."
"What did you do to her?"
Ami stood and paced away from him to the window where she seemed to contemplate nearly bare trees against the background of yellowing grass and the fading maroon of other buildings on the estate. "Who is this 'her'?"
"Don't toy with me."
She turned back to him, her eyes seeming almost liquid in their intensity of color. "Why would I toy with you, Hiiro? My goal is hardly to hurt anyone. There's already too much sadness in the world."
Hiiro gritted his teeth but managed an answer. "Usagi. What did you do to Usagi?"
The brunette sighed and removed her frameless glasses. "Let me tell you a story, Hiiro: A long time ago, my grandfather tried to create a drug that would cure Alzheimer's. You see," she paused and strolled along the edges of the library, eyeing the walls of books, "my grandmother had developed the disease and was slowly losing all vestiges of memories. Particularly memories of him." Ami pulled a conservatively-bound book from the shelf and read:
"The greatest happiness of life
Is the conviction that we are loved
Loved for ourselves, or rather,
Loved in spite of ourselves."
"Victor Hugo," he identified.
The corners of her mouth pulled downwards in the suppression of a smile. "Very good, Hiiro." She slid the book back into place and stepped away a little to eye the effect of her laymen's placement. "You see, Hiiro, my grandfather was not a charming man. He was rather … arrogant, ambitious, and something of a megalomaniac. But my grandmother loved him nevertheless. She brought him food the nights he spent in the lab experimenting with nuclear fusion, stayed up with him whenever he was neurotic about getting a grant or – you get the idea. They were very much—" Ami stopped as if catching herself, and thought briefly seared her forehead with its lines. "I digress," she finished shortly.
"The point is that my grandfather made a mistake in creating the medicine, and he instead created what he termed Lethe. You are familiar with the reference?"
He nodded as mild horror slackened the grip of what little expression marred his perfect features.
"Yes, well, ultimately I asked Usagi what was the one thing she wanted to forget." Ami paused for effect as she turned to look Hiiro fully in the eyes, the brief flicker of sorrow illuminating her features with the transience of a shooting star.
"Usagi chose to forget you."
Before he'd met her, Hiiro had already established a significant degree of fame as a photographer who only worked in black and white, specializing in somewhat macabre images that were compared to fin de siècle art, existentialist poetry, and decadent narratives. There were faint whispering of A Rebours, Narcissus, and Octave Mirbeau in conjunction with his work and name. 3
But then somewhere along the way, he ran into her; she had stood out in one of his pieces as an angel in a world of fallen, and, by some miracle or destiny if he believed in such a thing, one of his best friends had been commissioned to paint a portrait of her and her extended family. Trowa had introduced Hiiro's work to the Tsukino family and, to Hiiro's utter astonishment, Mr. Tsukino, Usagi's grandfather, the renowned patron of an eclectic array of artists, had taken a liking to his work.
The benefits were instantaneous, almost unreal; the patronage was lavish and personalized – a set of Huysman's literature with multiple copies of each book bound in different jewel tones like those described by Des Essentes; a personally commissioned crystal angel molded with such finesse that only the keenest of observers could detect the threads of cruelty crisscrossing his face; an oil on canvas titled Dorian Gray signed by "Basil Hallward" with painted features startlingly reminiscent of his own with which he had initially been fascinated but later hid in his attic much like the actual Dorian Gray. 4
But most importantly: exclusive dinners at various Tsukino estates with the entire Tsukino family.
It was at these events that he observed her. She was decidedly the most adored grandchild despite furtive murmurs of her illegitimacy later confirmed, and her every whim was fulfilled. What he didn't know was that while he was observing her, she was returning the favor.
Gradually his work evolved; colors were introduced – at first only the intensity of vermillion, later that of paradise blue, then softer colors timidly crept in – rose, lilac, ivory.
He could tell Tsukino was getting less and less interested in his work, and he panicked in fear of losing contact forever with the granddaughter. What he didn't know was that the granddaughter was becoming more and more intrigued as colors tiptoed into his pieces.
And the day she approached him – he left the encounter half numb and half frigid with awe. That night he produced some of his most poignant work, three sentimental pieces that Louis Cherronnet termed the three photographic expressions of the human psyche. He titled the triptych Her and inscribed at the bottom: 5
All measure, and all language, I should pass,
Should I tell what a miracle she was. 6
This was all that he was before Usagi. He promised himself that he would never have to know what he would be like after her. But as of 11:09 p.m. on November the 24th, Hiiro Yui was beginning his life after Usagi Tsukino.
As always, thank you for reading! Yours, Ange-.
Notes:
1."remembered thinking: and every time I try to say 'I love you,' the words die in my throat." – This was actually a line at the end of Liquid Ice's first chapter for After. I don't know what it meant because it was just kind of … hanging there … but I really liked it and stuck it in. :
2. "There was a smattering of confused applause as Usagi paused, hesitated, and started over on Glasgow Love Theme" – Glasgow Love Theme is an orchestral piece from the movie Love Actually. Very pretty piece. I would look into it. :
3. "compared to fin de siècle art, existentialist poetry, and decadent narratives. There were faint whispering of A Rebours, Narcissus, and Octave Mirbeau in conjunction with his work and name." – A Rebours is a pretty "decadent" book written by J. K. Huysman; I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the reference to Narcissus; Octave Mirbeau wrote The Torture Garden basically about a garden in which torture was cultivated. Overall, Hiiro's photography was along the lines of … unpleasant things. x
4. "a set of Huysman's literature with multiple copies of each book bound in different jewel tones like those described by Des Essentes; a personally commissioned crystal angel molded with such finesse that only the keenest of observers could detect the threads of cruelty crisscrossing his face; an oil on canvas titled Dorian Gray signed by "Basil Hallward" with painted features startlingly reminiscent of his own with which he had initially been fascinated but later hid in his attic much like the actual Dorian Gray." – the set of books in every color parallels what Dorian Gray did in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray; the crystal angel was random; Basil Hallward was the painter who painted the portrait of Dorian Gray to which Dorian transferred his soul – a subtle parallel was meant to be drawn between Hiiro and Dorian Gray – or at least the perception of Hiiro and Dorian Gray
5."That night he produced some of his most poignant work, three sentimental pieces that Louis Cherronnet termed the three photographic expressions of the human psyche. He titled the triptych Her and inscribed at the bottom" – Louis Cherronnet is a famous critic who writes for the magazine The Arts. I am unfamiliar if he does photography, but I was lazy and just picked his name. :
6. "All measure, and all language, I should pass, Should I tell what a miracle she was." – Concluding lines of John Donne's "The Relic."