Rest Your Head
Hey friends! I just wrote up a shortish Takarazuka fanfic inspired by Love and Death. (what else is there, really?)
Title: Rest Your Head
Pairing: HarunoxSena, DeathxSena
Rating:PG/PG-13
Summary: Sena becomes very sick around the time of her Moon Troupe Elisabeth performance, and receives a visit from Death herself. Will Death tear her away from the one she loves?
Rest Your Head
By El Higgins
“That’s all for tonight.” The director yelled and snapped the stereo off. Like marionettes on cut strings we all slumped, coming to various states of repose on the polished floor. The air filled with sighs. The rehearsal room was stifling and alive with stirred dust. The week before the first show was hell, it always was. My knees felt swollen in their sockets and even the bones of my face hurt. Worst of all, I still felt painfully awkward in my own skin. In the room with almost all the other Moon Troupe actresses I seemed naked and alone. I had not been in the troupe that long and I was still being measured; every word weighed, every step carefully calculated. It wasn’t that anyone was or had ever been unkind. It was that most of my troupe mates still drew that deep, cool, edge that separated them from me. I was waiting and waiting to be welcomed as a part of their singular, functioning, body. Our presentation of Elisabeth would be the real test.
Through it all there was a big, bloody, sore spot in my heart. This is where Haruno Sumire, my former partner in crime, my top star that I served with all my soul, belonged. I was trying to keep it together. I was trying not to feel resentful at the rest of the world for tearing me away from the only one I cared about so deeply. I forced myself everyday to give Ayaki, my new top star, a sort of mollifying encouragement or compliment, as if she could feel my sullen disappointment battering her like waves. Over and over I had to soothe myself, tell myself that it wasn’t like I was betraying Masa-chan, I was simply fulfilling my duties as a Takarazuka actress, no matter what they were.
Two flush-faced musume passed me for the door, murmuring softly to themselves. “Good work,” I said wearily. They bowed politely, but little warmth reached their eyes. I sighed. Sweat had crept out on my scalp in a chill wave. I was itching for a bath. I straightened up and stretched and a thin film of dizziness passed through me. I ignored it. You dance until so late in the night and it happens.
I caught movement from the corner of my eye and turned. A narrow hand slipped around my waist.
“You stumbled a lot tonight,” Ayaki’s smoky voice whispered, somehow sounding gentle and concerned despite her bold statement. (A statement that was regretfully true. Another time I might have been offended, but I was just too exhausted.) I flinched away and her hand left me. My skin crawled where it had been. At once I felt horrible that my rebelling body was so cruel. Ayaki had really been nothing but kind to me. Some evenings I even thought I saw something deep and strangely tender in her shadowy eyes, an emotion I did not want to contemplate.
“I-I’m fine, Ayaki-san. Thank you for the hard work.” I bowed stiffly, excruciatingly aware that I looked like a flustered middle school boy.
Ayaki lingered for a moment, and then nodded and turned and left. I watched her back for a second. She walked like she was eternally on stage, as if the sun and moon shone just to light her person and paths unfurled just for her feet. I shook my head, allowing a soft smile. Masa-chan had a bit of that in her, too. A stage-drama that trailed after her like a velvet cape. It made her even more beautiful. It made her a creature of dreams, to me.
My mind began to wander to the rehearsal nights when Masa-chan and I and the other Flowers would go in a noisy, jovial, group down the streets of Takarazuka. We’d pile into a small nook of a restaurant and it would be only us. There would be great smiles splitting our tired faces and sukiyaki steam heating the room and Masa-chan touching me softly. I don’t think she always realized she was touching me, and I really don’t think she realized how her touches scorched me with pleasure. Then there would be those long, soul-searching gazes she gave, the ones that left me trembling. It took courage to not look away when she stared into me, courage that I had only when I was with her. I noticed that she never looked at anyone else the way she looked at me. That was my secret treasure, and I guarded it with wicked glee.
Almost everyone had left now. I slung my bag over my shoulder and turned, almost tripping over the unfamiliar curtain of skirt hanging around my legs. I was so used to practicing in my sweat pants. It made me feel a shade clumsy, and even more anxious during rehearsal. I took a deep breath and shrugged it off. Rehearsal was over for tonight. I must force myself to relax, even if just for a few hours.
At the door a hand caught me and I turned. Oozora Yuuhi’s openly kind face greeted me. Of all the Moon Troupe she was the only one I felt I could depend on for genuine camaraderie. Our roots went deep compared to the other Moon actresses. Now her black eyes were playful, reminding me of an otter‘s. “Ah, Yoh-chan, good work!”
The woman bowed, and when she faced me again her face looked anguished and apologetic at once. She clasped her hands together.
“Asako, I have to clean the room tonight, right? But uh, I just got a call.” She waved her phone in my face so I fully grasped ‘got a call.’
My heart seized and sunk a little. “Yeah?”
“Do you think just tonight you could help me out? One of my friends, she hardly ever makes it over to Takarazuka so I never see her anymore, she just stopped by. She’s waiting for me. What do you think, huh? Would you please help me out, please?”
I really wanted to say no. As the adrenaline drained slowly from my veins I found that my head was pounding and each toe cried its separate hurt from my foot. But I was desperate for the approval of the new troupe, and Yuuhi had a way of making her smooth black eyes suck up your soul. I swallowed a sigh. Mostly I was just too nice for my own good.
“Of course. I’ll take care of it. Have fun and be careful. Bring me some kitsch!” I yelled at her retreating back. She threw back her head and laughed once at my Elisabeth reference. I crack me up.
I was alone. Out the windows on the far side of the room the stars hung like still snowflakes. I threw down my bag and got out the cleaning supplies from the closet. Never had the rehearsal room seemed so big. Never had I noticed how the dust crept so thoroughly into its corners.
I filled one bucket with water from the bathroom in the hall. I had filled it too full and left a trail of water all the way from the sink to the room. I groaned. It killed my back stooping to wipe up the mess. Back in the room I threw the rag into the bucket and watched it swirl in angelic slowness. My mind wandered as my exhausted body wrung out the rag and pushed it through its duties.
I thought again of my Haruno. Out of this whole ordeal, this changing troupes and being made to play a musumeyaku’s part, of being ripped way from old friends and thrust into a group of mostly strangers with almost no time left till the performance-- out of all this what irked me most was the bad timing of it all! If I was to be forced into being Elisabeth, why could it not have been in the shadow of Masa-chan’s Death? Why switch me at this last moment, when I could have been so close to bliss? I felt gypped. So close yet so far. Why hadn’t the board members had me play Elisabeth while I was still in the troupe where I belonged?! To dance across the floor in the arms of my pale prince of darkness…The thought made me swoon. Suddenly I was back in the room and I had knocked the bucket over. The water soaked my shoes. I didn’t feel it. My feet looked so far away. The rag fell to the floor, too. It had been in my hand. I didn’t remember dropping it. Then my feet were very close to me, and then gone.
A voice that could sing ice from water woke me. The voice was whispering, and I roused to the cool caress of it passing over my face and unfurling in the air and vanishing. It had left some of its chill with it, lingering on my face. It felt good against my skin, which felt hot. I was on my side and my clothes were soaked.
I pushed myself up, blinking black puddles away from my vision. I had fainted. Alarm began to grow in my stomach. I couldn’t remember the last time I had passed out over something, if ever I had. How long had I been out? I glanced at my watch. Only a few minutes. I steadied my heart and my breathing, and then sighed in relief. Just a spell of dizziness, then. That’s all.
I rubbed at my arms. Every independent nerve in my body was complaining now, as if some menace had gone around and punched each of those nerves individually in the eye. I recognized this pain now: the full-body ache of fever. I shuddered at the thought. No. No. This could not happen now. I can be sick as long as I want after the performance, but not now. Forcing the possibility completely from my head, I cleaned up the spilled water, shivering at the damp folds of skirt that now alternately slapped and clung at my thighs.
While ringing the last of it into the bucket, I looked around. The room wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. I was desperate to get to my room, my bed. I carried all the supplies back to the closet and picked up my bag. As I stood at the door to leave, my hand on the light switch, I remember that strange voice I had heard on waking. I stared around the room. Everything still. I glanced at the little stereo tucked against the wall, wondering if it had been left on and produced the soothing ribbon of voice. It was turned off. I shrugged and hit the lights.
Out in the night air, my legs turned to stone where the wet skirts touched them. I wrapped my arms around myself and ran quickly, head down, towards my dorm. I fumbled with the keys at the door, my fingers numb and not wanting to grip anything. The door swung open and I staggered in, sighing. I paused for a second and simply rested my forehead against the cool wall inside. So blessedly cool. I toed off my shoes and let my feet, too, soak up the cold from the floor. It was one of those moments where you could have turned into a statue at that moment for all eternity and that would have been perfectly okay. Eternal rest.
I forced myself out of my repose and turned on the lights. My whole body froze. A slender black shadow slid out from the corner of the room and vanished. Vanished into nothing. There was nowhere it could have gone that could have escaped my eye. Feathery silver motes hung in the air where it had passed. I staggered backwards into the kitchen, the knobs on the oven digging into my backbone. I forced myself to breathe. There was nothing there, now. But then there was, but close to me, against me. A coldness like long fingers sweeping down my throat. I snatched up the knife from the counter and slashed it through the air, hoping to scare away the…the…
My arm went slowly to my side. I was going insane. There was nothing here. How could there be? Although better than many of the younger actresses‘, my room was very narrow and straightforward. Nothing could hide from me, here. I set the knife down. I bit my lip until my heart fluttered into a more normal beat. I needed something hot to drink and clear my mind.
I filled the teapot and collapsed in a chair at the small, round, table. The next thing I was blinking at was the tips of my hair brushing the lacy tablecloth. I had nodded off. Something in the room was buzzing. I could feel it faintly through my fingertips. My cellphone. I fished through my bag and popped it open. Warmth flooded my frozen skin. A message from Masa-chan.
“I’m sure you are doing great. We all miss you.”
My hands grew clammy and I set the phone down. The tears were at the back of my throat, a solid knot. Just as I was contemplating letting them go in one big flood, the teapot begin to whistle. I took some chamomile down from the cabinet and loaded a cup with sugar. I watched it swirl up into a clear syrup as I poured. I needed that sugar. I felt barren inside and very sad, and I didn’t want to go to sleep, afraid the sweetness of my dreams would only intensify my loneliness; just as Masa-chan’s message had only reminded me I was alone.
I sat down at the table, spinning the cup in my fingers and waiting for it to cool enough to drink. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught that I had missed the arrival of a second message on the phone, probably drowned in the clatter of dishes. The message was from Masa-chan again.
“More than anything,” she had texted, “I miss you. I want you here with me, always.”
I reread the message. Very calmly, I stood up from the table. All those abused nerves had suddenly leapt up in me and were swarming. I felt like running a marathon and I felt like dying. What did this message mean, what did it mean? It was obviously not a normal message.
I picked up the phone and read the message over and over again, having to keep clicking buttons to keep the screen lit. Always must keep it lit. The bone-aching rehearsal I’d been at mere hours ago seemed like years ago. My misery was a distant memory that belonged to someone else. Masa-chan was like that. Her words rearranged my world. Her words swept all pain away. But never had I gotten a message as dear to my pounding heart as this. My mind was spinning with its possibilities, ached with its possible implications. I paced over and over through my room, stumbling more than once over my futon. I was grinning foolishly. Again and again my trembling fingers typed out a message to her, but never had the guts to press send. Messages like:
“And I miss you too, more than anything.”(Understanding, mutual)
“I thought of you all night!” (stronger, still nodding the idea that I returned her emotions)
and then messages like: “Shall I come to your room?” (daring, hopeful)
or “I love that you miss me. And I only want to be with you, as well.” (but what if Sumire doesn’t feel that deeply for me? What if I’ve read her wrong? What if she’s still speaking to me as a friend? She’s always one for making situations over dramatic with her dialogue. Too many sickly sweet scripts.)
Finally I found myself shut up in the cramped bathroom, holding the phone in my lap but exhausted now from reading that same message over and over. I hadn’t sent one to her in reply. I must wait till I could think clear. The initial excitement had died down, but now it pulsed in me warmer than embers. After a few minutes of dozing I tossed the phone onto the futon and practically floated back into the kitchen. With the leftover water from the teapot I made a small bowl of ramen. When the garlicky steam rose up to my nose my stomach did a sick flip flop. I stopped pouring the water. This was not good.
Turning my face away, I added the rest and carried it to the table. I stared at the floating carrot chips and poison-green peas floating among the noodles. I caught myself thinking absurdly that they looked like children’s toys, not food. Too bright these dried vegetables, like plastic pieces. I shoved at the noodles with my chopsticks and finally lifted a sheaf of them to my mouth. The second they hit my stomach I was on my feet and rocketing into the bathroom. My knees dug hard against the tile floor. The ramen was out of there. And so, it felt, were all of my major organs. I slumped back, finally, my throat feeling sandpaper-scraped. I moaned, my eyes teary. My hair felt too hot for my head. I messed with it and messed with it, trying to get it to stay back but it wouldn’t. Finally I dragged myself to the shower and took a cool one. While my hair was wet I pinned it away from my face.
I went out of the bathroom and stared at the phone. I felt awful. I was quivering on legs that felt no sturdier than twigs. I wanted to call Masa-chan, to tell her tearfully that I didn’t feel so well and would she please come over and hold me and explain to me the mystery of her strangely intimate message. I didn’t though. I didn’t call or text. Because I knew she would come, and I was exhausted and didn’t want her to see me this way, didn’t want her to try and persuade me to quit the performance, which would be another nightmare all its own.
Leaving my ramen and tea out on the table, I laid down in the cool sheets of the bed. My overheated mind began to wander instantly. It was that kind of strangely vivid wandering it does when you are on the brink of awake and sleep, that twilight time when you swear you hear clear snatches of conversation, see familiar faces and walk unfamiliar roads buzzing with detail. Voices I almost recognized floated around me in quick conversation. Flocks of black-winged birds flew through the ragged clouds over my head, beaded with rain. Suddenly I believed with every centimeter of myself that I was Elisabeth. My eyes found the knives on the kitchen counter. I reached weakly in their direction, thinking it was my time to sing and that I didn’t have my knife, and it was just too far away.
The sheets alternately burned and froze my skin. I kicked them away and then pulled them tight, shivering. I dreamed of walking across a rope and falling, but I didn’t hit ground I just kept falling and falling…
The voice wove complicated patterns through the air. The voice was my friend and my most terrible dream. It melted my skin and froze my heart. It was right in my ear, now tickling against my throat. I opened my eyes to pitch black. I was shivering so hard my teeth chattered. The sky outside my small window was obscured with dark clouds. I was stiff and terrified, and goosebumps had risen on my neck. I was afraid to turn my head and look towards the door; I knew a steely presence lurked there.
“What do you want?” I croaked.
The black shape detached itself from the wall and floated forward. The muted moon-glow shone on her polished nails and in her silver tumble of hair. I could not see much in the dark, but I could see her mouth quirked up in one corner, looking extremely satisfied. She was cloaked in sable fur; it flowed soundlessly behind her.
“Death.” I said. I could feel that my eyes were very wide.
“Naturally.” She cooed, and sat down against me on the bed. Her long fingers ran through my hair, pulled it away from where sweat had plastered it to my face. Where she touched, my misery seemed to drain away.
“I feel better…” I wondered aloud.
“Many do, after their time has passed… it is only that passing that sometimes hurts.”
My mind was too clouded to try and digest that. I felt generally that I should be alarmed, but found that I could not be.
“I cannot see you well,” I said. “Turn on a lamp.”
She paused, and smiled slowly. “No lamp.” She lifted her luminous eyes towards the window, and with her fingers made a turning gesture. The clouds opened like a curtain before the moonlight and the room flared in silvery, distinct, relief. I gasped. Death had Haruno’s face. Or was it Haruno, herself? I lifted my hand, felt a smooth cheek.
‘It’s you!” I cried. Tears actually came out and ran down my cheeks.
Death looked at me almost sadly, and caught my hand. “Yes, it’s me. My face pleases you, as I knew it would.”
“Masachan.” I sighed, my eyes falling shut. I was waiting for her to take me up in her arms. When those arms did not come I opened my eyes. No one was there. The room was dark. Death’s sudden absence terrified me more than her sudden appearance. With a stifled shout I snatched up my sheets and wrapped them fast around me, glancing around the room in fear. I expected icy fingers from every direction, stabbing weapons and leering undead faces. I moaned and fell back into the pillows. The world spun and burned around me. A small part of me, one that was still whole and coherent, cried out for help. There was something very wrong. I was no longer shivering. I felt…warm.
“Would you kiss me now, Asako?”
I gripped her slender shoulders and pulled myself up. I had known she was crouched above me for a long time, but I had kept my eyes closed and just listened.
Death’s silver hair glowed with the moonlight that had again grown outside my window. There was a feather from my pillow in her hair. I plucked it out carefully. She caught my hand and pressed it to her chest. One very aristocratic eyebrow rose. Despite the coldness in her expression, I felt safe and comforted near her.
“Answer me.”
“Will I kiss you?” I murmured.
She nodded, and her gaze was serious.
“That would mean…I die?”
She purred deep in her throat. “Would that be so bad?”
Her voice made fire stir sleepily in my belly. I swallowed, feeling thirsty but I could hardly focus on the strange spirit’s face, let alone a walk to the kitchen to locate a cup and water.
“I would miss things.”
“What would you miss that I couldn’t give you?” She said, moving closer to me. I stared at her, her face that was Masa-chan’s.
“I would miss her!” I blurted. It was so strange to me, so strange that it hurt my head: that I should be shouting that I would miss Masa-chan, but shouting it to Masa-chan’s face!
I pressed my hands over my face and moaned. “Leave me alone! I am not Elisabeth!”
There was a velvet silence. All the silences left by Death were velvety, I was learning.
“Ah, Elisabeth. You don’t want to be Elisabeth. You don’t want any of this. Your life as you knew it has twisted and you hate it. I don’t blame you.”
She sighed luxuriously and tossed her head of liquid silver. Her skin was white and poreless. There seemed to be no shadows anywhere on her face though she was cloaked in them everywhere else. She was so very close to me but she carried no scent, unless the moonlight flooding the window had a scent.
“Why are you saying that? To torture me?” I asked brokenly.
She pulled me into her lap. I blushed, but didn’t try to move. Her long nails were pressed flat across my stomach.
“To help you. What is there for you? What you loved has been taken away. And what’s more, they will move on while you are left here alone and defenseless.”
I dug my fingers into her knee and shook my head. “No, no! That’s not true, she just sent me a message, here. She misses me, she wants me there!” I groped around the wreckage of my bed for my phone, couldn’t find it. I began to grow frantic.
“It’s somewhere around here.”
Death gave me a poison-sweet, pitying look. I only let myself look at her from the corner of my eye, because I didn‘t want to see her face.
“I-I can’t find my phone, but she really did send me a message….I…I think she loves me!” I shouted boldly. “And I feel the same way!”
Death gripped my shoulders and flung back her head to laugh. I stared at her throat, and then she brought her head forward again, and I was accidentally staring straight into Masa-chan’s face.
“Haruno-san, doesn’t she always talk this way to everyone? ‘I passionately feel THIS way, and I passionately feel THAT way’? I thought that was just how she spoke. What separates you from everyone else? Haruno-san is a top star. She could have whatever and whoever she wants. She could have you if she truly wanted, yet she doesn‘t. Strange, that.”
My heart broke. I flinched away from Death when she tried to touch me. I hugged my pillow tight and pressed my eyelids against my hand. My dreams spiraled away from me and I knew my life for what it was. I had been dropped in the middle of a wasteland of hopelessness. All I had in my future was a hatefully tight corset and long skirts that I felt awful in and a troupe that didn’t accept me. I would have to flounce around the stage and be held by unfamiliar hands and pressed close to unfamiliar curves. And everyone from Flower would nod in a congratulatory manner to me afterwards when we passed, and then turn back to each other and whisper all the secrets that were Flowers‘ only. Haruno may have been my friend, but friends vanished as quickly as they were born, especially in Takarazuka. I had seen it. I had been part of it and its sad and fragile dance.
Cool fingers pulled the hair back from my face and throat. Breath tingled in my ear. Death, Haruno, Death, so close to me and holding me so kindly like a mother. I wound my arms around her. We became all hard edges under silken flesh, moving together. My mouth sought hers. Her lips spread in a dark, sharp-toothed smile. A hand stroked my thigh.
Her breath was in my mouth when the door to the dorm opened and banged against the wall. Someone tall and slender stood in the muted hallway light, as familiar to me as my own shadow. The body in my arms unraveled and vanished like mist. I cried out in joy and horror at once. I tried to speak as my rescuer snapped on the lights and moved to my side and gathered me up. I could hear words:
“Asako, oh Asako! Your skin is on fire! The neighbor said you kept talking and talking but there was no one here with you. She said you sounded strange.” She cupped my neck and tried to make me stand. I was trying desperately to answer her, but my tongue wouldn’t wrap around any words. My eyes would hardly stay open. My mind was giving up and could suddenly not supply the name of this person holding me, though my heart rushed with blood.
Lips pressed to my forehead, familiar smell washed over me and settled into my clothes. My tears smeared against her soft shirt.
“I am going to take you to a hospital, okay?” This voice was speaking to me. “You are very sick Asako, do you understand me? You are very sick.” Her voice sounded broken. Her arms held me even tighter.
“Oh I love you,” the voice said this time, but very softly. “I love you.”
I was being helped up and out the door. Two actresses were waiting in the hall. My mind still refused to give up names. I was nearly gone now. I was sinking away from myself. There was the girl with the red hair and the charming beauty spots on her face. There was the girl who had asked me to stay and clean, otter-eyes. They were touching me, and their touches were kind. They were speaking anxious things and then running off.
I looked over my shoulder, into my room filled with night. Death stood against my window. Her face was the moon wreathed in clouds. Her hair was the stars, the wave of the milky way. Her mouth was like a deep cut in the heart, and I could not tell if the mouth was angry or pleased or calm or filled with sadness. She raised a pale hand to me in promise. The curtains swayed over her, and when they swayed back, nothing.
I blinked. My hands were wrapped deep in this woman’s shirt. This woman carrying me away. I could feel her voice humming in her chest but no longer hear it. She was taking me to safety. I knew this. I needed no more words. And even though at this time there was no name my mind could grasp, my heart knew her name. It would always know her name.
Title: Rest Your Head
Pairing: HarunoxSena, DeathxSena
Rating:PG/PG-13
Summary: Sena becomes very sick around the time of her Moon Troupe Elisabeth performance, and receives a visit from Death herself. Will Death tear her away from the one she loves?
Rest Your Head
By El Higgins
“That’s all for tonight.” The director yelled and snapped the stereo off. Like marionettes on cut strings we all slumped, coming to various states of repose on the polished floor. The air filled with sighs. The rehearsal room was stifling and alive with stirred dust. The week before the first show was hell, it always was. My knees felt swollen in their sockets and even the bones of my face hurt. Worst of all, I still felt painfully awkward in my own skin. In the room with almost all the other Moon Troupe actresses I seemed naked and alone. I had not been in the troupe that long and I was still being measured; every word weighed, every step carefully calculated. It wasn’t that anyone was or had ever been unkind. It was that most of my troupe mates still drew that deep, cool, edge that separated them from me. I was waiting and waiting to be welcomed as a part of their singular, functioning, body. Our presentation of Elisabeth would be the real test.
Through it all there was a big, bloody, sore spot in my heart. This is where Haruno Sumire, my former partner in crime, my top star that I served with all my soul, belonged. I was trying to keep it together. I was trying not to feel resentful at the rest of the world for tearing me away from the only one I cared about so deeply. I forced myself everyday to give Ayaki, my new top star, a sort of mollifying encouragement or compliment, as if she could feel my sullen disappointment battering her like waves. Over and over I had to soothe myself, tell myself that it wasn’t like I was betraying Masa-chan, I was simply fulfilling my duties as a Takarazuka actress, no matter what they were.
Two flush-faced musume passed me for the door, murmuring softly to themselves. “Good work,” I said wearily. They bowed politely, but little warmth reached their eyes. I sighed. Sweat had crept out on my scalp in a chill wave. I was itching for a bath. I straightened up and stretched and a thin film of dizziness passed through me. I ignored it. You dance until so late in the night and it happens.
I caught movement from the corner of my eye and turned. A narrow hand slipped around my waist.
“You stumbled a lot tonight,” Ayaki’s smoky voice whispered, somehow sounding gentle and concerned despite her bold statement. (A statement that was regretfully true. Another time I might have been offended, but I was just too exhausted.) I flinched away and her hand left me. My skin crawled where it had been. At once I felt horrible that my rebelling body was so cruel. Ayaki had really been nothing but kind to me. Some evenings I even thought I saw something deep and strangely tender in her shadowy eyes, an emotion I did not want to contemplate.
“I-I’m fine, Ayaki-san. Thank you for the hard work.” I bowed stiffly, excruciatingly aware that I looked like a flustered middle school boy.
Ayaki lingered for a moment, and then nodded and turned and left. I watched her back for a second. She walked like she was eternally on stage, as if the sun and moon shone just to light her person and paths unfurled just for her feet. I shook my head, allowing a soft smile. Masa-chan had a bit of that in her, too. A stage-drama that trailed after her like a velvet cape. It made her even more beautiful. It made her a creature of dreams, to me.
My mind began to wander to the rehearsal nights when Masa-chan and I and the other Flowers would go in a noisy, jovial, group down the streets of Takarazuka. We’d pile into a small nook of a restaurant and it would be only us. There would be great smiles splitting our tired faces and sukiyaki steam heating the room and Masa-chan touching me softly. I don’t think she always realized she was touching me, and I really don’t think she realized how her touches scorched me with pleasure. Then there would be those long, soul-searching gazes she gave, the ones that left me trembling. It took courage to not look away when she stared into me, courage that I had only when I was with her. I noticed that she never looked at anyone else the way she looked at me. That was my secret treasure, and I guarded it with wicked glee.
Almost everyone had left now. I slung my bag over my shoulder and turned, almost tripping over the unfamiliar curtain of skirt hanging around my legs. I was so used to practicing in my sweat pants. It made me feel a shade clumsy, and even more anxious during rehearsal. I took a deep breath and shrugged it off. Rehearsal was over for tonight. I must force myself to relax, even if just for a few hours.
At the door a hand caught me and I turned. Oozora Yuuhi’s openly kind face greeted me. Of all the Moon Troupe she was the only one I felt I could depend on for genuine camaraderie. Our roots went deep compared to the other Moon actresses. Now her black eyes were playful, reminding me of an otter‘s. “Ah, Yoh-chan, good work!”
The woman bowed, and when she faced me again her face looked anguished and apologetic at once. She clasped her hands together.
“Asako, I have to clean the room tonight, right? But uh, I just got a call.” She waved her phone in my face so I fully grasped ‘got a call.’
My heart seized and sunk a little. “Yeah?”
“Do you think just tonight you could help me out? One of my friends, she hardly ever makes it over to Takarazuka so I never see her anymore, she just stopped by. She’s waiting for me. What do you think, huh? Would you please help me out, please?”
I really wanted to say no. As the adrenaline drained slowly from my veins I found that my head was pounding and each toe cried its separate hurt from my foot. But I was desperate for the approval of the new troupe, and Yuuhi had a way of making her smooth black eyes suck up your soul. I swallowed a sigh. Mostly I was just too nice for my own good.
“Of course. I’ll take care of it. Have fun and be careful. Bring me some kitsch!” I yelled at her retreating back. She threw back her head and laughed once at my Elisabeth reference. I crack me up.
I was alone. Out the windows on the far side of the room the stars hung like still snowflakes. I threw down my bag and got out the cleaning supplies from the closet. Never had the rehearsal room seemed so big. Never had I noticed how the dust crept so thoroughly into its corners.
I filled one bucket with water from the bathroom in the hall. I had filled it too full and left a trail of water all the way from the sink to the room. I groaned. It killed my back stooping to wipe up the mess. Back in the room I threw the rag into the bucket and watched it swirl in angelic slowness. My mind wandered as my exhausted body wrung out the rag and pushed it through its duties.
I thought again of my Haruno. Out of this whole ordeal, this changing troupes and being made to play a musumeyaku’s part, of being ripped way from old friends and thrust into a group of mostly strangers with almost no time left till the performance-- out of all this what irked me most was the bad timing of it all! If I was to be forced into being Elisabeth, why could it not have been in the shadow of Masa-chan’s Death? Why switch me at this last moment, when I could have been so close to bliss? I felt gypped. So close yet so far. Why hadn’t the board members had me play Elisabeth while I was still in the troupe where I belonged?! To dance across the floor in the arms of my pale prince of darkness…The thought made me swoon. Suddenly I was back in the room and I had knocked the bucket over. The water soaked my shoes. I didn’t feel it. My feet looked so far away. The rag fell to the floor, too. It had been in my hand. I didn’t remember dropping it. Then my feet were very close to me, and then gone.
A voice that could sing ice from water woke me. The voice was whispering, and I roused to the cool caress of it passing over my face and unfurling in the air and vanishing. It had left some of its chill with it, lingering on my face. It felt good against my skin, which felt hot. I was on my side and my clothes were soaked.
I pushed myself up, blinking black puddles away from my vision. I had fainted. Alarm began to grow in my stomach. I couldn’t remember the last time I had passed out over something, if ever I had. How long had I been out? I glanced at my watch. Only a few minutes. I steadied my heart and my breathing, and then sighed in relief. Just a spell of dizziness, then. That’s all.
I rubbed at my arms. Every independent nerve in my body was complaining now, as if some menace had gone around and punched each of those nerves individually in the eye. I recognized this pain now: the full-body ache of fever. I shuddered at the thought. No. No. This could not happen now. I can be sick as long as I want after the performance, but not now. Forcing the possibility completely from my head, I cleaned up the spilled water, shivering at the damp folds of skirt that now alternately slapped and clung at my thighs.
While ringing the last of it into the bucket, I looked around. The room wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. I was desperate to get to my room, my bed. I carried all the supplies back to the closet and picked up my bag. As I stood at the door to leave, my hand on the light switch, I remember that strange voice I had heard on waking. I stared around the room. Everything still. I glanced at the little stereo tucked against the wall, wondering if it had been left on and produced the soothing ribbon of voice. It was turned off. I shrugged and hit the lights.
Out in the night air, my legs turned to stone where the wet skirts touched them. I wrapped my arms around myself and ran quickly, head down, towards my dorm. I fumbled with the keys at the door, my fingers numb and not wanting to grip anything. The door swung open and I staggered in, sighing. I paused for a second and simply rested my forehead against the cool wall inside. So blessedly cool. I toed off my shoes and let my feet, too, soak up the cold from the floor. It was one of those moments where you could have turned into a statue at that moment for all eternity and that would have been perfectly okay. Eternal rest.
I forced myself out of my repose and turned on the lights. My whole body froze. A slender black shadow slid out from the corner of the room and vanished. Vanished into nothing. There was nowhere it could have gone that could have escaped my eye. Feathery silver motes hung in the air where it had passed. I staggered backwards into the kitchen, the knobs on the oven digging into my backbone. I forced myself to breathe. There was nothing there, now. But then there was, but close to me, against me. A coldness like long fingers sweeping down my throat. I snatched up the knife from the counter and slashed it through the air, hoping to scare away the…the…
My arm went slowly to my side. I was going insane. There was nothing here. How could there be? Although better than many of the younger actresses‘, my room was very narrow and straightforward. Nothing could hide from me, here. I set the knife down. I bit my lip until my heart fluttered into a more normal beat. I needed something hot to drink and clear my mind.
I filled the teapot and collapsed in a chair at the small, round, table. The next thing I was blinking at was the tips of my hair brushing the lacy tablecloth. I had nodded off. Something in the room was buzzing. I could feel it faintly through my fingertips. My cellphone. I fished through my bag and popped it open. Warmth flooded my frozen skin. A message from Masa-chan.
“I’m sure you are doing great. We all miss you.”
My hands grew clammy and I set the phone down. The tears were at the back of my throat, a solid knot. Just as I was contemplating letting them go in one big flood, the teapot begin to whistle. I took some chamomile down from the cabinet and loaded a cup with sugar. I watched it swirl up into a clear syrup as I poured. I needed that sugar. I felt barren inside and very sad, and I didn’t want to go to sleep, afraid the sweetness of my dreams would only intensify my loneliness; just as Masa-chan’s message had only reminded me I was alone.
I sat down at the table, spinning the cup in my fingers and waiting for it to cool enough to drink. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught that I had missed the arrival of a second message on the phone, probably drowned in the clatter of dishes. The message was from Masa-chan again.
“More than anything,” she had texted, “I miss you. I want you here with me, always.”
I reread the message. Very calmly, I stood up from the table. All those abused nerves had suddenly leapt up in me and were swarming. I felt like running a marathon and I felt like dying. What did this message mean, what did it mean? It was obviously not a normal message.
I picked up the phone and read the message over and over again, having to keep clicking buttons to keep the screen lit. Always must keep it lit. The bone-aching rehearsal I’d been at mere hours ago seemed like years ago. My misery was a distant memory that belonged to someone else. Masa-chan was like that. Her words rearranged my world. Her words swept all pain away. But never had I gotten a message as dear to my pounding heart as this. My mind was spinning with its possibilities, ached with its possible implications. I paced over and over through my room, stumbling more than once over my futon. I was grinning foolishly. Again and again my trembling fingers typed out a message to her, but never had the guts to press send. Messages like:
“And I miss you too, more than anything.”(Understanding, mutual)
“I thought of you all night!” (stronger, still nodding the idea that I returned her emotions)
and then messages like: “Shall I come to your room?” (daring, hopeful)
or “I love that you miss me. And I only want to be with you, as well.” (but what if Sumire doesn’t feel that deeply for me? What if I’ve read her wrong? What if she’s still speaking to me as a friend? She’s always one for making situations over dramatic with her dialogue. Too many sickly sweet scripts.)
Finally I found myself shut up in the cramped bathroom, holding the phone in my lap but exhausted now from reading that same message over and over. I hadn’t sent one to her in reply. I must wait till I could think clear. The initial excitement had died down, but now it pulsed in me warmer than embers. After a few minutes of dozing I tossed the phone onto the futon and practically floated back into the kitchen. With the leftover water from the teapot I made a small bowl of ramen. When the garlicky steam rose up to my nose my stomach did a sick flip flop. I stopped pouring the water. This was not good.
Turning my face away, I added the rest and carried it to the table. I stared at the floating carrot chips and poison-green peas floating among the noodles. I caught myself thinking absurdly that they looked like children’s toys, not food. Too bright these dried vegetables, like plastic pieces. I shoved at the noodles with my chopsticks and finally lifted a sheaf of them to my mouth. The second they hit my stomach I was on my feet and rocketing into the bathroom. My knees dug hard against the tile floor. The ramen was out of there. And so, it felt, were all of my major organs. I slumped back, finally, my throat feeling sandpaper-scraped. I moaned, my eyes teary. My hair felt too hot for my head. I messed with it and messed with it, trying to get it to stay back but it wouldn’t. Finally I dragged myself to the shower and took a cool one. While my hair was wet I pinned it away from my face.
I went out of the bathroom and stared at the phone. I felt awful. I was quivering on legs that felt no sturdier than twigs. I wanted to call Masa-chan, to tell her tearfully that I didn’t feel so well and would she please come over and hold me and explain to me the mystery of her strangely intimate message. I didn’t though. I didn’t call or text. Because I knew she would come, and I was exhausted and didn’t want her to see me this way, didn’t want her to try and persuade me to quit the performance, which would be another nightmare all its own.
Leaving my ramen and tea out on the table, I laid down in the cool sheets of the bed. My overheated mind began to wander instantly. It was that kind of strangely vivid wandering it does when you are on the brink of awake and sleep, that twilight time when you swear you hear clear snatches of conversation, see familiar faces and walk unfamiliar roads buzzing with detail. Voices I almost recognized floated around me in quick conversation. Flocks of black-winged birds flew through the ragged clouds over my head, beaded with rain. Suddenly I believed with every centimeter of myself that I was Elisabeth. My eyes found the knives on the kitchen counter. I reached weakly in their direction, thinking it was my time to sing and that I didn’t have my knife, and it was just too far away.
The sheets alternately burned and froze my skin. I kicked them away and then pulled them tight, shivering. I dreamed of walking across a rope and falling, but I didn’t hit ground I just kept falling and falling…
The voice wove complicated patterns through the air. The voice was my friend and my most terrible dream. It melted my skin and froze my heart. It was right in my ear, now tickling against my throat. I opened my eyes to pitch black. I was shivering so hard my teeth chattered. The sky outside my small window was obscured with dark clouds. I was stiff and terrified, and goosebumps had risen on my neck. I was afraid to turn my head and look towards the door; I knew a steely presence lurked there.
“What do you want?” I croaked.
The black shape detached itself from the wall and floated forward. The muted moon-glow shone on her polished nails and in her silver tumble of hair. I could not see much in the dark, but I could see her mouth quirked up in one corner, looking extremely satisfied. She was cloaked in sable fur; it flowed soundlessly behind her.
“Death.” I said. I could feel that my eyes were very wide.
“Naturally.” She cooed, and sat down against me on the bed. Her long fingers ran through my hair, pulled it away from where sweat had plastered it to my face. Where she touched, my misery seemed to drain away.
“I feel better…” I wondered aloud.
“Many do, after their time has passed… it is only that passing that sometimes hurts.”
My mind was too clouded to try and digest that. I felt generally that I should be alarmed, but found that I could not be.
“I cannot see you well,” I said. “Turn on a lamp.”
She paused, and smiled slowly. “No lamp.” She lifted her luminous eyes towards the window, and with her fingers made a turning gesture. The clouds opened like a curtain before the moonlight and the room flared in silvery, distinct, relief. I gasped. Death had Haruno’s face. Or was it Haruno, herself? I lifted my hand, felt a smooth cheek.
‘It’s you!” I cried. Tears actually came out and ran down my cheeks.
Death looked at me almost sadly, and caught my hand. “Yes, it’s me. My face pleases you, as I knew it would.”
“Masachan.” I sighed, my eyes falling shut. I was waiting for her to take me up in her arms. When those arms did not come I opened my eyes. No one was there. The room was dark. Death’s sudden absence terrified me more than her sudden appearance. With a stifled shout I snatched up my sheets and wrapped them fast around me, glancing around the room in fear. I expected icy fingers from every direction, stabbing weapons and leering undead faces. I moaned and fell back into the pillows. The world spun and burned around me. A small part of me, one that was still whole and coherent, cried out for help. There was something very wrong. I was no longer shivering. I felt…warm.
“Would you kiss me now, Asako?”
I gripped her slender shoulders and pulled myself up. I had known she was crouched above me for a long time, but I had kept my eyes closed and just listened.
Death’s silver hair glowed with the moonlight that had again grown outside my window. There was a feather from my pillow in her hair. I plucked it out carefully. She caught my hand and pressed it to her chest. One very aristocratic eyebrow rose. Despite the coldness in her expression, I felt safe and comforted near her.
“Answer me.”
“Will I kiss you?” I murmured.
She nodded, and her gaze was serious.
“That would mean…I die?”
She purred deep in her throat. “Would that be so bad?”
Her voice made fire stir sleepily in my belly. I swallowed, feeling thirsty but I could hardly focus on the strange spirit’s face, let alone a walk to the kitchen to locate a cup and water.
“I would miss things.”
“What would you miss that I couldn’t give you?” She said, moving closer to me. I stared at her, her face that was Masa-chan’s.
“I would miss her!” I blurted. It was so strange to me, so strange that it hurt my head: that I should be shouting that I would miss Masa-chan, but shouting it to Masa-chan’s face!
I pressed my hands over my face and moaned. “Leave me alone! I am not Elisabeth!”
There was a velvet silence. All the silences left by Death were velvety, I was learning.
“Ah, Elisabeth. You don’t want to be Elisabeth. You don’t want any of this. Your life as you knew it has twisted and you hate it. I don’t blame you.”
She sighed luxuriously and tossed her head of liquid silver. Her skin was white and poreless. There seemed to be no shadows anywhere on her face though she was cloaked in them everywhere else. She was so very close to me but she carried no scent, unless the moonlight flooding the window had a scent.
“Why are you saying that? To torture me?” I asked brokenly.
She pulled me into her lap. I blushed, but didn’t try to move. Her long nails were pressed flat across my stomach.
“To help you. What is there for you? What you loved has been taken away. And what’s more, they will move on while you are left here alone and defenseless.”
I dug my fingers into her knee and shook my head. “No, no! That’s not true, she just sent me a message, here. She misses me, she wants me there!” I groped around the wreckage of my bed for my phone, couldn’t find it. I began to grow frantic.
“It’s somewhere around here.”
Death gave me a poison-sweet, pitying look. I only let myself look at her from the corner of my eye, because I didn‘t want to see her face.
“I-I can’t find my phone, but she really did send me a message….I…I think she loves me!” I shouted boldly. “And I feel the same way!”
Death gripped my shoulders and flung back her head to laugh. I stared at her throat, and then she brought her head forward again, and I was accidentally staring straight into Masa-chan’s face.
“Haruno-san, doesn’t she always talk this way to everyone? ‘I passionately feel THIS way, and I passionately feel THAT way’? I thought that was just how she spoke. What separates you from everyone else? Haruno-san is a top star. She could have whatever and whoever she wants. She could have you if she truly wanted, yet she doesn‘t. Strange, that.”
My heart broke. I flinched away from Death when she tried to touch me. I hugged my pillow tight and pressed my eyelids against my hand. My dreams spiraled away from me and I knew my life for what it was. I had been dropped in the middle of a wasteland of hopelessness. All I had in my future was a hatefully tight corset and long skirts that I felt awful in and a troupe that didn’t accept me. I would have to flounce around the stage and be held by unfamiliar hands and pressed close to unfamiliar curves. And everyone from Flower would nod in a congratulatory manner to me afterwards when we passed, and then turn back to each other and whisper all the secrets that were Flowers‘ only. Haruno may have been my friend, but friends vanished as quickly as they were born, especially in Takarazuka. I had seen it. I had been part of it and its sad and fragile dance.
Cool fingers pulled the hair back from my face and throat. Breath tingled in my ear. Death, Haruno, Death, so close to me and holding me so kindly like a mother. I wound my arms around her. We became all hard edges under silken flesh, moving together. My mouth sought hers. Her lips spread in a dark, sharp-toothed smile. A hand stroked my thigh.
Her breath was in my mouth when the door to the dorm opened and banged against the wall. Someone tall and slender stood in the muted hallway light, as familiar to me as my own shadow. The body in my arms unraveled and vanished like mist. I cried out in joy and horror at once. I tried to speak as my rescuer snapped on the lights and moved to my side and gathered me up. I could hear words:
“Asako, oh Asako! Your skin is on fire! The neighbor said you kept talking and talking but there was no one here with you. She said you sounded strange.” She cupped my neck and tried to make me stand. I was trying desperately to answer her, but my tongue wouldn’t wrap around any words. My eyes would hardly stay open. My mind was giving up and could suddenly not supply the name of this person holding me, though my heart rushed with blood.
Lips pressed to my forehead, familiar smell washed over me and settled into my clothes. My tears smeared against her soft shirt.
“I am going to take you to a hospital, okay?” This voice was speaking to me. “You are very sick Asako, do you understand me? You are very sick.” Her voice sounded broken. Her arms held me even tighter.
“Oh I love you,” the voice said this time, but very softly. “I love you.”
I was being helped up and out the door. Two actresses were waiting in the hall. My mind still refused to give up names. I was nearly gone now. I was sinking away from myself. There was the girl with the red hair and the charming beauty spots on her face. There was the girl who had asked me to stay and clean, otter-eyes. They were touching me, and their touches were kind. They were speaking anxious things and then running off.
I looked over my shoulder, into my room filled with night. Death stood against my window. Her face was the moon wreathed in clouds. Her hair was the stars, the wave of the milky way. Her mouth was like a deep cut in the heart, and I could not tell if the mouth was angry or pleased or calm or filled with sadness. She raised a pale hand to me in promise. The curtains swayed over her, and when they swayed back, nothing.
I blinked. My hands were wrapped deep in this woman’s shirt. This woman carrying me away. I could feel her voice humming in her chest but no longer hear it. She was taking me to safety. I knew this. I needed no more words. And even though at this time there was no name my mind could grasp, my heart knew her name. It would always know her name.