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From the album : Vitamin C
A Koko wa Greenwood fic by Yen. All characters are owned by Yukie Nasu.
Notes: MAJOR KUDOS TO Mel for helping me write this. Sounding board and idea generator (Mel: *protests* I just sit on the rock of angst and comment!)
As we go on, we remember
All the times we had together
“Same time, same place?”
“As always.”
“Who’s bringing the sake?”
“You are.”
“Oh. How about Suka and Shun?”
“Suka’s got an appointment but he’ll see us later.”
“Okay… how about Shun?”
“He’ll be dropping his two boys off at karate then meeting us.”
“All right then, so I’ll see you Saturday?”
“Yes. And don’t forget the sake.”
End tone.
Mitsuru shook his head and put the phone down. Even after all this time Shinobu always got the last word. Grumbling slightly, he picked up his calendar.
His eyes narrowed.
Wait a minute… he started counting off on his fingers and silently swore. It wasn’t his turn to buy the sake; it was Shinobu’s!
But… grinning evilly to himself, he picked up the phone and dialed another number, a cheery expression adorning his face.
And as our lives change, come whatever
We will still be, friends forever
“Mitsuru-sempai!” Suka glowered at the amber-headed man who looked at him innocently.
“Yes Suka?”
“It wasn’t my turn to buy the sake!” Waving the sake bottles around wildly, he ranted and raved about horrible people who told people to buy sake when it wasn’t their turn then refused to pick up the phone five minutes later when said people called back to correct their mistake. After half an hour, the sake bottles were gone, but he was still complaining about Mitsuru.
“… and furthermore…” Suka stopped and looked around. “Wait a minute… where’s the sake?”
“Sake?” Mitsuru looked innocently around him. “Oh you mean this sake?”
Picking up the sake bottles they had been drinking from while enjoying Suka’s rant, he tipped them over and shook his head. “Oops… empty. Sorry.”
Suka’s face turned as red as his hair and steam erupted from his ears.
“Se…se…se… sempai!!!! How could you do this to me?!”
“Why whatever do you mean?” Mitsuru looked shocked and hurt, while amusement danced in his eyes as Suka started straight off on another rant.
Smirking slightly, he caught Shinobu’s eye and grinned. Shaking his head, Shinobu sighed and continued watching his best friend taunt the flustered redhead.
Things hadn’t changed a bit.
So if we get the big jobs and we make the big money
When we look back now, will our jokes still be funny?
As they walked towards the entrance together, Shinobu kept silent. Finally after a few minutes, Mitsuru burst out.
“What?!”
“Why do you keep taunting Suka?”
Mitsuru pondered the matter, his face solemn. “Because it is my sacred duty to prepare him for the world, the evil people who would mercilessly torment and taunt the poor innocent boy. I must toughen him up. It’s a tough and dirty job but someone has to do it.”
Shinobu’s brow arched. “That almost sounds convincing. If I didn’t know that he’s thirty something, has a wife and a couple of kids, has faced the “evil world” and that the “evil people who mercilessly torment and taunt the boy” is standing in front of me.”
“That’s not fair.” Mitsuru protested.
“Oh yes, I forgot about Kazuhiro. Okay, so one of them is standing in front of me while the other is running around Japan.”
“Shinobu!” Mitsuru huffed and quietened down. They waited in silence for several minutes, before the silver limousine pulled up into the driveway and the stoic chauffeur exited to hold the door open.
Turning to Mitsuru, Shinobu gestured towards the car. “The temple right?”
Mitsuru nodded. About to slide into the plush leather seats, he stopped and looked up into Shinobu’s cool eyes and grinned.
“But it was funny right?”
Silence.
Shinobu rolled his eyes. “So it was funny but you really should grow up.”
Mitsuru grinned before his face smoothed out into a mock solemn expression. “I can’t. It’s an addiction.”
Shinobu groaned. “Whatever. Can you please get in? It’s freezing out here.”
Moving in, the door finally shut on the duo and the driver clambered in, the limousine finally moving away to the faint sounds of disagreement.
“But it was funny!”
“But you should grow up.”
“I didn’t see you helping Suka.”
“…”
“C’mon admit it. You found it funny too.”
“That’s not the point.”
…..
Will we still remember everything we learned in school?
Still be trying to break every single rule
Mitsuru stifled a groan as he stubbed his toe on the chair. Stamping quickly down on his urge to swear at the offending furniture, he continued weaving quietly through the obstacles in his living room, the dim moonlight just sufficient to make out distinct shades of black and darker black.
A floorboard creaked. He stopped, cold sweat on his back, his ears straining for a slightest whisper of noise. For a moment, nostalgia washed across him as he remembered trying to sneak back into Greenwood, but now the stakes were higher, the punishment greater.
Slowly inching his way towards the stairs, he slowly padded up the wooden planks. One, two, skip the third cause of the creak, four, inch past five with the occasional splinters in the centre, six…
Light washed brilliantly across the stairwell, illuminating him in its exposing glare.
“Mitsuru.” He winced.
He quickly started, having learnt quickly that the best defense was the good offense.
“Sorry, my honey. The thing ran a bit late so Shinobu gave me a lift home. And here’s some flowers.” He smiled winsomely as he handed her the brilliant roses, hope bubbling beneath his cheery surface. Maybe he could get out of this, she took them, she was sniffing the roses, she looked….
Her face lifted. Mad. Mitsuru gulped.
“Where did you get these at 4 in the morning?” The words dropped icicles on his head.
“At the Koneko no Sumu?” he stated hesitantly, unsure of the trigger on her temper this time.
“Really?” she drawled. “Doesn’t it close at 6? And speaking about closing times, weren’t you supposed to be back at 12? I don’t run a hotel you know.”
His head bobbed up and down earnestly. “Yes I know dear. But the thing ran a wee bit late…”
“You call 4 a.m. a wee bit late? And what happened to you? I called the restaurant and they said they closed at 2.” Her eyes froze over. “And that you were there till 2.”
He winced. “I… erm… I…”
“Oh never mind.” Turning around, her expression softened and she hugged the flowers closer to her, walking off towards their bedroom. “Come up to bed.”
He goggled at her back. “You mean you forgive me?”
She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Can I help it that my husband is a moron who tries to get me flowers at 2 in the morning and gets arrested instead?” (1)
Mitsuru protested. “I’m not a mor… wait a minute… how do you…”
He trailed off as he watched her retreating back. It was scary sometimes how his wife was like Shinobu. It was like she knew everything. Shaking his head, he followed her, not noticing the call indicator light next to the phone flashing softly, bearing the number of one said Tezuka Shinobu.
Will little brainy Bobby be the stockbroker man?
Can Heather find a job that won't interfere with her tan?
Suka stared down at his piece of paper and scowled. “I still think this is stupid.”
Mitsuru snickered. “That’s just cause the computer said that you would make a good infirmary doctor in a boy’s school.”
“C’mon Suka-chan. It’s not that bad.” Suka glowered at his roommate, genki smile still plastered on his face.
“I still think it’s wrong. Besides, what did you get?”
“Me?” Shun blushed and looked down prettily. “Nothing really important.”
Suka’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by “nothing really important”?”
Behind them, Shinobu leaned against the doorjamb. “Congratulations Shun, you’re one of the few in Greenwood who managed to get millionaire as a possible career occupation in that computer quiz the school make us take during our second year.”
“WHAT?!” Suka stared at his blushing roommate and rushed for the printout. “Let me see that.”
Grabbing it, he stared down disbelieving and started reading. “Millionaire, Stockbroker, Entrepreneur, Chief Executive Officer of a Multi-National Corporation, Shipping Tycoon, Media Guru… what? No Ruler of the World?” He asked sarcastically.
Mitsuru looked at Shinobu. “Didn’t you get that one?”
Shinobu shrugged. “Yes. But the school said that it had to be computer error since there was no possible choice like that inputted.”
“Right.” All three sweatdropped.
“So…” Suka asked slowly, not even sure he wanted to, but the words were being dragged out of him. “What did the corrected version say?”
“No job.”
“What?” All three goggled at him.
“The programmers traced it back and apparently, with the new design they put in, Ruler of the World wasn’t a viable career option but was instead a lifestyle. That was why I ended up unemployed.”
He smiled.
I keep, I keep thinking that it's not goodbye
Keep on thinking it's a time to fly
And this is how it feels
Mitsuru walked out of the career talk, his head craning around. Finally, he spotted his target in a discreet corner, cigarette in hand. Sighing, he stalked over and gestured towards the glowing butt.
“Better put that out, everyone will be coming out soon.”
Shinobu looked at Mitsuru out of the corner of his eye, shrugged and casually put it out, the last plumes of smoke drifting lazily into nothingness.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“What do you mean?” Shinobu looked up at the sky and felt like another cigarette. His hand reached down for the pack but was stopped by another tanned one. Looking up, he glared into violet eyes that stared impassively back.
“No.”
“Pardon?”
“No. I’m not going to let you. You’ve been smoking too much for the past few days.”
Shinobu shrugged off the hand and stared up at the sky. “Leave me alone.”
“No, I won’t. This behaviour of yours is starting to worry me. What’s your problem?”
Silence.
“Listen, you can be as stubborn as you want but you know that I’ll get it out of you eventually.”
Cold gray eyes stared evenly back. Mitsuru sighed. “You’re going to be stubborn about this aren’t you?”
Silence.
“Oh yeah.” Mitsuru waited for a while before starting again. “Would you like me to speculate about what has you down?”
“….”
Taking silence for consent, he cleared his throat, positioned himself more comfortably on the cement floor and started, “Tezuka Shinobu, President of Student Council, to graduate in…” he stared down at his watch, “1992, and all-around superman. Condition, increasing melancholia with occasional lapses into depression. Symptoms, increased smoking and going to the toilet. Not that one mutually excludes the other you understand,” Mitsuru hurriedly went on to explain and winced as Shinobu glared at the weak joke.
“You’re testing my patience.”
“Okay okay…” Mitsuru’s hands came up in defeat. “But, you have to admit it would be a lot easier for you to tell me the problem then for me to speculate aloud and irritate you right?”
He smiled disarmingly at his friend who glared narrowly back. “…”
Mitsuru smiled again.
“…”
And again.
“Oh all right,” Shinobu snapped irritably, or as much as Shinobu would snap. “Turn off the lights. It’s blinding me.”
Obediently diluting down the wattage of his smile, Mitsuru pushed. “So?”
Waving around him, Shinobu asked a question of his own. “What do you think of this…. Situation?”
“Huh?” Surprised, Mitsuru looked around them and stared back. “You mean us sitting here?”
Shinobu rolled his eyes. “Are you purposely trying to get me to lose my temper?”
“Calm down.” Mitsuru patted his friend’s arm in an effort to pacify. “Just continue.”
Shinobu sighed and rested his head on the wall. “Don’t you feel… upset?”
“About what?” Mitsuru looked at his friend, genuinely puzzled.
“About the fact that we’re leaving Greenwood. About the fact that we’re graduating.”
“No, why should I?”
“Because we’re leaving. Things aren’t going to be the same anymore you know. University’s a whole other world and it’s going to be completely different. We’re… growing up.”
“Don’t you want to grow up?”
Shinobu shrugged and his fingers itched for another cigarette. Studying his friend’s face, Mitsuru suddenly got an epiphany and shook his head.
“You actually like this place don’t you? You actually… have feelings?”
Shinobu glowered at him. “I do not. And if you tell anybody…”
“Don’t worry. My lips are sealed.” Mitsuru grinned before his face turned solemn. “But to answer your question, I guess I do feel… sad. I mean, we’ve had a lot of good memories here and it’s going to be hard saying goodbye to them as well as to all our friends and teachers but we have to move on. We can’t stay in one place forever.”
His face broke into a grin. “Think of it as an adventure. Going out into the big world, the baby chicks spreading their wings.”
Shinobu’s brow arched and Mitsuru hastily continued. “You know what I mean. It’s not really goodbye per se, since we carry those memories inside us. Besides,” he gave Shinobu a friendly whack to the back, “we’ll still see each other going to the same university and it’s not like we can’t come back and visit the others.”
His eyebrows waggled up and down evilly and Shinobu remarked drily. “Don’t you mean torture Suka?”
“You know what I mean…” Mitsuru airily waved off.
Will we think about tomorrow like we think about now?
Can we survive it out there? Can we make it somehow?
Shinobu’s brow lifted. “But you do realize that there are larger ramifications besides the fact that we’re leaving right?”
“Yeah, sure, but we’ll survive it. We always do.”
Shinobu looked at him. “I don’t just want to survive Mitsuru. I actually want to…” he searched for a word. “… live. Right now, we all live in the present. Greenwood is our entire life and it’s a bit like the protective shell we stay in until we’re ready to meet our obligations in the real world, our obligations to our parents and to ourselves. But tomorrow, tomorrow’s a whole different matter. We’re adults in the world of tomorrow and we’re no longer children who can play around with our lives, making choices and decisions without consulting others. Our choices have ramifications.”
“But they are our choices.” Mitsuru interrupted, his face aglow with deep-rooted certainty. “No matter what you say in the end, it’s still our choice. I know that we’re pressured on all sides, everyone is, with parents’ expectations, society’s expectations and our own expectations, but at the end of it all, you have to do what’s right for yourself. You can’t live for other people you know.”
Shinobu shook his head. “I wish it were that easy.”
Mitsuru shook his own head. “It is that easy. We can live our own lives. In fact, we will live our own lives. And don’t worry,” he flashed his familiar grin, “If I get the feeling that you’re just… surviving, I’ll bop you on the other head.”
Shinobu half-smiled back. “You'll never succeed but you can certainly try.”
I guess I thought that this would never end
And suddenly it's like we're women and men
Hats tossed wildly in the air. Ribbons glittering. Loud garbled noises as people cheered and cried and thumped each other on their backs.
Complete pandemonium. Emotions running high. Ecstatic expressions. Tear-stained cheeks. Girls hugging each other. Boys shaking hands, smiling. Everyone exchanging numbers, promising to keep in touch.
One light-haired boy standing silently within the crowd. Apart. An older couple next to him, heads held high with pride.
An amber head next to him, being congratulated and hugged and kissed. Faces wreathed in smiles.
Proud families stand around, basking in their children’s reflected glow.
Mitsuru looks across the crowd at Shinobu with a half-smile.
What now?
Shinobu shrugs in reply before half-smiling in return.
We grow up.
Will the past be a shadow that will follow us round?
Will these memories fade when I leave this town
The light casts shadows, deep and heavy on the floor next to the bed and I wonder…
I can’t believe it. I’m an adult…. Or supposed to be one.
Tomorrow, I stand in front of my peers and accept my degree.
I stand on the threshold to…. I don’t know what.
My path’s been decided. Follow the family heritage with all my inadequacies, insecurities and problems. To follow my heart or break my family’s?
I don’t know what I want to do. That is the problem. How do you follow your heart when you can’t quite see it? There is no glowing goal that I enshrine, no beacon of light to strive towards and to which I can show my family as something I want to do. Instead, all I have it mist. Gray, formless, mist.
Will I lose myself? The person I found in Greenwood and managed to hold onto in university? Will I be submerged into the role I am to play in society, in my family’s eyes? To exist and not live?
Questions circle in my head, prodding uncomfortably.
I do now know. I may end up another drone, another gray shadow in society, surviving but not living.
I keep, I keep thinking that it's not goodbye
Keep on thinking it's a time to fly
And yet…
I still have a chance. It is still my path to walk and my life to choose. My own memories to keep or forget. And as long as I remember that, that is all that matters.
Two boys stare at the ceiling and turn over, smiling.
And that is all that matters.
~ owari ~
(1) For those interested, this is what happened to Mitsuru that night…
(That night)
Mitsuru stared at the temple, the purring sound of the limousine fading in the darkness.
It was dark. Very dark. He looked down at his watch. It blinked back at him.
2:17:09.
*flashback*
“I want you back early Mitsuru. I know how you can get sidetracked at these little reminisces off yours and the kids need to be sent to school at 7 tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry my honey. I’ll be back by 12, 11:50 even.”
She humphed. “We’ll see.”
*end flashback*
He shuddered. Why did she have to be so right? He looked down at his watch.
Up at the temple.
Down at his watch.
2:24:46.
He gulped. He had to move soon. Suddenly one of those silly women’s magazines that he occasionally noted around the house swam to the front of his consciousness.
“Women’s weakness – a man with flowers.”
“Yosh.” He slammed his fist into the palm of his head. There was a public garden round the corner and it would be simple to just get a few flowers. He knew that it was off-limits but he was desperate. Besides, who would be around at this time of night?
(In a large expensive penthouse)
“Ring ring.”
Shinobu stared at the phone. Then his shoulders slumped in resignation. Stifling a sigh, he picked up the phone. “Yes Sergeant, I do know one Ikeda Mitsuru and I will be down to bail him out. I assume that the fine for picking flowers is still 90,000 yen and that cash is preferred? Not a problem. I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”
Click. The policeman took the phone away from his ear and stared at it. Looking back up at the resigned man across from him with bulging eyes, he stammered slightly. “But… but… I didn’t say anything!”
Standing up, Mitsuru padded over to the stricken policeman and thumped him comfortingly on the back. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”
(At the police station)
Exactly 15 minutes later, the silver limousine pulled up at the front of the police station, and 45 minutes later, pulled away with both Mitsuru and Shinobu in it while the entire staff of policeman stared after them. Shaking their heads, they gladly returned to their normal, mundane lives.
Shinobu was scary.
Meanwhile, in the car, Shinobu looked at the crestfallen Mitsuru and gestured towards the chauffeur who nodded back in understanding.
Silence. Finally the car pulled to a halt and Mitsuru glanced casually up from the wilted flowers in hand.
His eyes widened. “What the…? This isn’t my house.”
Shinobu got out of the car and waited for his friend who finally clambered out, a question in his violet eyes. Turning to the flowershop, his eyes widened even more as he took in the lights behind the windows of the shop. What the… the florist’s was open?
He watched Shinobu rap on the door that slowly opened at the hand of a grudging florist. Entering the shop, he beheld in awe as Shinobu indulged in a quiet face down with the red-haired florist who glared sullenly at the duo.
Behind him, two other florists brought the flowers out, one yawning while the other grumbled about the party he had been dragged from.
Mitsuru finally awakened sufficiently from his stupor to choose the flowers and pay for it, not even complaining when the initial price quoted had been ludicrously high. Shinobu however did and soon the price lowered to a more reasonable figure, the redhead glowering the whole while.
After a couple of minutes, Mitsuru soon found himself back in the car, his hands round a beautiful bouquet of red roses, and heading back home – and incidentally in a situation he had been trying to achieve for the past two hours.
He stared at Shinobu. “How do you do it?”
Looking out of the window, Shinobu shrugged and answered. “I called in a favour from a friend.”
Somewhere, Persia sneezed.
comments? Please send them over, kudasai! ^_^
HTMLing done by Jop, 2000.