The Bluest Captivation
Edited: 2012.07.20
An overdue fic for you_mehappy at the arashi_anonmeme here.
Title: The Bluest Captivation
Feature/Pairing: Arashi, OhnoxOC (Tori)
Genre: Romance, Fantasy
"You were born during a storm," Mrs. Ohno said each time her youngest child returned home with a scrape. "Maybe that's why you can't sit in one place."
Mr. Ohno proudly countered every time, “He’s special.”
And Ohno would raise his fists like a hero and storm from the room shouting unintelligible words.
He was a strange child who found trouble in every corner. In replace of what he did not say, he acted. And curious of his parents’ warnings, he did the opposite of what they forbade him. Bruises, cuts, and broken bones could not stop him from rushing into a mess.
Everyone who knew him expected a terrible consequence to fall on him. Yet, no one could’ve guessed the price of his childish recklessness.
*
The time of year was autumn and a few days before Ohno’s sixth birthday.
At the neighboring park, Ohno slipped his mother’s notice and rode his mini tricycle towards its perimeters. He rode to the cement walkway and planned escape. Despite the stone steps that loomed before him, he pedaled harder. The small, plastic vehicle squeaked as it neared the drop.
“Satoshi!” his mother screamed behind him.
He ignored her. The front wheel of his tricycle ran off the edge. The rest, carrying him, followed. For a split second, his body felt weightless. He saw the stone steps below him, menacing and cold. For the first time, the child Ohno knew fear.
He did not remember anything beyond the sensations of jarring, cutting pain, of his heart pumping harder, faster, and of his lungs trying to squeeze in air. He felt cold.
In the darkness that eventually took over, he looked for his parents. He was surrounded by nothing but vast emptiness. He was alone and he was afraid. A small light in the distance beckoned. Ohno crawled towards it.
“You don’t want to go that way,” an echo stopped him.
Ohno turned and saw a young woman on his other side. Her black hair flowed around her and she stood with the tips of her toes floating above the unseen ground, as if she could defy gravity. Ohno thought she was beautiful, and he watched in awe as she smiled down at him.
“Do you want to live?” she asked him.
He didn’t understand her question. “Where is mommy?” Ohno asked her.
“You can see her if you live,” she answered. She smiled again. “Do you want to live, Satoshi?”
“Yea,” he decided.
The woman extended her hands and Ohno took them. Hers were small and slim, but his were smaller. She held them gently. “I will give you my wings for thirty years, but in exchange, you will give me your heart for three hundred years. Will you take it?” she asked.
Ohno thought he had no use for a heart. “Okay,” he said.
The woman disappeared among a thousand blue feathers that fluttered down.
Ohno woke in a hospital room, heavily bandaged, with a few needles sticking into him. He hurt and he had no strength, but he did not need to move. His father sat beside his bed while his mother slept in the chair across the room.
“He’s awake!” Mr. Ohno exclaimed as soon as Ohno opened his eyes, and turned to his wife who had jerked awake in her chair.
She rushed to join his father at his side. Ohno burst into tears.
*
The night before he was to leave the hospital, Ohno dreamed he stood in a field of white flowers.
He blinked at the velvety petals that overwhelmed his vision. Years later, he would recognize the flowers as white carnations, but at that moment he was only awed by the sheer number of them. They surrounded him and stretched beyond the horizon. He could only see the flowers and the pale blue sky.
A chirp took his attention. He saw a crippled bird at his feet and stepped back. The bird ignored him and chirped at the sky, a place it could never reach with its broken wings. Its dark blue feathers, black tipped, a stark contrast to the green and white of his surroundings, reminded him of the woman in his dream.
Ohno blinked and the bird was no longer there. A girl sat at his feet in its place. Her long black hair fell down her back. She wore a blue frilly dress that was the exact color of the bird’s feathers. She was as young as he. When she smiled up at him, she resembled the woman he had seen.
“Will you play with me?” she asked.
“Okay,” Ohno agreed. “But I promised mommy I won’t get into trouble.”
“Then let’s walk,” she suggested, “and pick as many flowers as we can.”
“If I pick more than you, will I win a prize?” he asked.
“Yes,” the girl said. “But if I win, you will give me something.”
They walked side by side through the heavily flowered field. The flowers gave way easily and pollen did not cling to their clothes. Despite the beaming sun, Ohno felt comfortably warm. He and the girl broke the stems of carnations along the way and held the flowers under their arms. They did not tire or sweat as they bent to take each one.
Ohno worked viciously hard to gather his, but he noticed after half an hour that his bouquet was not getting bigger. He saw that the girl’s pile was larger than his.
“No fair,” he said and threw down his bouquet. “You cheat.” He pressed his lips together in a sulk.
She straightened and laughed at him. She grabbed her own pile and threw it into the air. A shower of white petals rained down on them. Like the pure snowflakes of a first snowfall, they disappeared as soon as they touched a solid mass.
Ohno felt silly. “I don’t want to pick flowers anymore. It’s stupid and girly.”
The girl smiled reassuringly at him and extended her hand. “Okay. Then let’s run.”
He thought about rejecting the idea. Ohno took her hand instead.
They counted backwards from three. At two, he ran full speed ahead. He dragged her behind him, but unexpectedly she laughed and allowed herself to be pulled along.
Sounds of a bird song echoed in the distance, too far to make out. The carnations waved in a sudden breeze, as if they agreed with her laughter.
Ohno’s anger eased away. Wings in his stomach fluttered. His breath caught. He strained to hear her voice. He did not want her to stop laughing.
He ran as the wind whipped around them. The flowers rustled and gave way to their pounding feet. The sun set in the background. He ran with her trailing behind him, their hands still clasped, until the sky glowed a darkened orange. Then his pace slowed and he turned to face her.
“Tori,” he called her. “Are you leaving?”
She tightened her grip on his fingers. “You must find me. You promised.”
Ohno eagerly nodded.
Tori extended her other hand. “You are going to fly. You'll become a star with the wings I gave you. But don't forget me, Satoshi. I’m waiting.”
Before Ohno could take her second hand, he woke in his hospital bed.
*
Ohno entered the entertainment industry at thirteen. He joined an agency, starred in a commercial, modeled, and dropped out of high school to study acting and singing for two years. To everyone's surprise, including his parents, he had talent and a strong passion for dancing.
At eighteen, Ohno released his first single and struggled to make the charts and sales.
"You're fine," his manager assured. "Only the lucky ones make it big overnight. You have a charm that seeps in slowly."
Then he had a concert, played his first on-screen role as a minor character in a movie, and appeared on several variety shows. He soon became a regular on a midnight talk show where he befriended the mc, a man younger than him by a year. The mc, Sakurai Sho, was his first famous friend in the industry. He was also the first to see Ohno’s wings.
“They linger out of range, in my peripheral vision,” Sakurai said. “I wondered what they were when I first saw you. You have something, someone, watching over you.”
Ohno had stared at him and kept his silence, because he could not talk about Tori. Not to anyone.
Sakurai had thought Ohno looked at him as if he was crazy and refrained from mentioning the wings ever again.
But he introduced Ohno to another star, a young man leading four different variety shows on several television stations. Aiba Masaki, Sakurai's friend, had one drink with Ohno and broached the subject right away.
"I can see your wings," Aiba said. "They're very pretty."
To him, Ohno had changed the flow of conversation. "Are you psychic?"
Aiba crossed his arms and leaned back against his chair. "I wish I were. I buy a lot of books about it."
Ohno nodded in understanding. "If I had powers, I would talk to other things."
"Isn’t that scary?" Aiba asked.
"I don’t think so," Ohno answered.
"Well, that’s cool," Aiba said. He decided right then that they would make the best of friends and prophesied a bright future for Ohno.
A few years later, his words took off in the form of Matsumoto Jun, the genius photographer who saw Ohno for the first time and declared he would have no other model for his one-hundredth-and-fifth shoot. Becoming the favorite of Matsumoto gave Ohno all the media attention he needed to propel his career forward.
He held his first nationwide concert tour and continued to stand in the spotlight as valuable offers came one after another. First a starring role on television, then numerous commercials, special dramas, fan-meets in several countries, and the position of tourism ambassador for his hometown. His releases always topped the charts during their first week sales.
On what seemed like a weary and endless afternoon, Ohno was scheduled to film three episodes of the variety show he hosted with Aiba, and was changing in his green room when a person burst in. Ohno wondered how Ninomiya Kazunari had entered the station without a pass. He didn't ask.
"I have the perfect song for you!" Ninomiya declared. A friend, composer, and lyricist who had written countless songs for Ohno, he walked into Ohno's dressing room easily. He watched, without batting an eyelash, as the star pulled on the jeans his stylist had put out for him.
"This song will steal the hearts of all your fan-girls. Again." Ninomiya strutted around the room. He stopped, paused, and then went around the table to settle comfortably in Ohno's empty seat. "They'll love you even more when you sing it live." He beamed and waited for a response.
Ohno blinked in nonchalance.
"Trust me," Ninomiya said. And then he leaned forward and whispered with a hint of humor in his eyes, "Love will fly in the air."
"Thanks," Ohno murmured and left for the studio.
Love was a word to him. It meant giving away a part of himself he didn't have. He only loved his parents and sister and maybe his friends. Of the inanimate things, he loved fishing, drawing, and his radio controlled cars. But he couldn't love in the way everyone wanted.
Ohno’s tour that took off later that year, named after his latest album, included a medley of love songs in the encore.
On stage and the center of attention, Ohno sung with all the passion he could muster and though he saw a few in the crowd wipe their eyes, he could not comprehend how they were so affected.
He closed his eyes, drew breath, and prepared to sing the chorus. He opened his eyes to view his audience again. Ohno saw a flash of blue in the crowd, a blue so similar to that color in his memory, that he paused mid-song. His pulse quickened. His breath grew short.
The music continued without him, and then changed to accommodate his lack of singing. A voice blared in his ear-phone, asking him what was wrong. The confusion on his fans’ faces questioned his silence.
Ohno ignored everything around him.
His promise with Tori at five seemed nothing more than a dream, was nothing more than a dream. But he still missed her. Among all the girls in the crowd, he could not find her. He could not find that same blue again.
He swallowed as he stood on the stage clutching his microphone, feeling like a lost little boy of five.
*
That night, Ohno dreamed of the field of white carnations again. But no matter where he looked, Tori was nowhere to be found.
He ran through the field until the same wind whipped up and swayed the flowers, until they waved at him as they had done twenty five years ago. But he could not hear the echo of bird song in the distance. He knew it was near, but he could not make out its sound.
Although he could not sweat or run out of breath, he stopped. Ohno dropped into a bed of flowers and closed his eyes. He wished to see Tori. He wished she would catch up to him, laughing, not caring that he had left without her.
No one answered him.
When the sun began to set and the sky tinged with orange, he sat up and picked flowers. He held the carnations under his arm and walked through the field gathering as much as he could.
When darkness set in, Ohno threw his bouquet into the air above him. Instead of a rain of white petals, blue feathers with black tips fluttered down to meet him.
“Tori,” Ohno said. “Thirty years is too long.”
*
“Turn a little more. Look comfortable,” Matsumoto told him before he snapped a shot of Ohno.
Sakurai continued to ask Ohno questions, even when Ohno replied with the smallest of answers, and pressed on with topics Ohno didn’t care about.
Ninomiya had written a new song for Ohno and appeared to brag about it the next day. “It’ll be your best selling single yet,” he assured.
Aiba and Ohno drank, ate, and hung out together.
Ohno went to his filmings, interviews, studio recordings, dance rehearsals, public appearances, and meetings.
The last five years ticked by slowly, like a needle chipping at rock going a millimeter a second. His sales reached their peak. His face stared back at him from every billboard. The membership of his fan club flooded. The paparazzi turned over his every word as if they could find a subtle message behind its literal meaning.
Ohno turned thirty-six.
*
That autumn day, his friends who had come together threw him a party at a secluded mansion in the countryside.
“A hotel is unoriginal and a cruise, which Sakurai suggested, would have half of your guests puking over the edge,” Ninomiya told Ohno. “Including me.”
“And by the seaside?” Ohno asked.
“You can’t have the whole world,” Ninomiya said, crossing his arms and putting on an annoyed front. “Matsumoto already rented an entire gallery for your viewing pleasure.” He indicated the paintings that littered the mansion.
Ohno was saved from further conversation with Ninomiya when Aiba stood to make a toast in his honor.
“I am from Chiba,” Aiba began, meeting Ohno’s eyes across the room, “and it is a miracle that I could meet Ohno. I am sure the two of us was fated to be friends from the very beginning. All of us here, too, met Ohno because of fate. We are gathered here today for his thirty-sixth birthday, because of fate.” At which point he paused and sniffed. “Ohno is special. He is...he has...”
“To Ohno Satoshi!” Sakurai cut in. He raised his glass of wine above his head.
Aiba raised his own. “To Ohno Satoshi!”
The chorus rang around and everyone took a sip from the drink they carried.
Ohno endured two more hours of congratulations from his guests then took a phone call from home. His mother apologized for her timing, gave him her blessings, and told him he had a package arriving from her. He told her he’d look out for it.
When Ohno returned to the celebration fifteen minutes later, he did so reluctantly. He stopped to view a painting on the way so no one would talk to him. What he saw did not register at first, until he looked closely and was shocked into speechless stillness. The painting, named “Snow,” was of an entire field of white carnations. The image was the exact one from his dreams. He could not make out the signature.
Ohno’s limbs unlocked with a jerk and he ran, stumbling, to the next painting. An orange sky with a setting sun. He ran to the next. A mini tricycle. And the next. A vast darkness with a single beam of light in the distance. On and on and on until he stopped at the last painting named “Promise,” of a small boy, younger than six, cradling a dying bird in the yard.
Ohno sought out Matsumoto.
Matsumoto stood in a crowd and was in the middle of a conversation. Without an explanation, Ohno took the photographer’s arm and pulled him away.
He started in a rush and urgent restlessness, “W-who’s the ar-artist of the paintings?”
“Do you like them?” Matsumoto asked.
Ohno stared at his friend, unable to answer, his blood pumping, the whole room spinning, the floor unstable beneath his feet. He waited for his answer.
“I don’t know,” Matsumoto confessed. “She said you’d love them.”
“Who?” Ohno asked, his voice a mere squeak.
“I don’t know,” Matsumoto said. He saw the disappointment that flickered across Ohno’s face. Ohno’s shoulders sagged and his foot that had tapped restlessly stopped. Matsumoto noticed the red hue of Ohno’s face. “Are you okay, Ohno? Do you need fresh air?”
“I’m okay,” Ohno mumbled. “I’ll go outside for a bit.”
“I’ll go with you,” Matsumoto pitched in.
“I’m fine,” Ohno assured and left for the terrace overlooking the back courtyard alone.
The night was cold and those who had ventured outside had already left for the warm interior. Ohno stood at the balcony and stared with empty eyes at the ground below. He saw nothing. He searched inside himself, for that place in his heart that throbbed with a force he couldn’t name. He felt breathless, as if he had run a mile without stopping. Ohno closed his eyes and took a deep breath of cold air.
A rustle interrupted him.
He stirred and looked down and saw a woman sitting in the darkness, a woman he remembered from a dream long ago. Long black hair fell down her back in waves. She wore a frilly dark blue dress that fell around her frame. She was as beautiful as the first time he had seen her.
“Tori,” he whispered. He gripped the stone balcony and could not believe what he saw. Yet, the chill of his fingers told him this was not his hallucination. It was not a dream. He held his breath. He did not want to blink. He could not lose her again.
Behind him, the celebration went on, unaware of the two of them.
Below, Tori smiled up at him and extended her hands. She met his eyes and Ohno saw that they were as blue as her dress. “Satoshi,” she whispered, and yet he could hear her clearly, “do you love me?”
Ohno closed his eyes. He focused on his own heartbeat. Then he opened them and looked down and she was still there with her hands extended. He knew his answer. He knew all along.
“Yes,” he answered. For the rest of three hundred years and, maybe, even more.
Ohno climbed onto the rail and stepped off. He reached Tori.