[Open Post] Forty-Sixth Birthday
It was a night like this when Muraki was born, a cold, frosty midnight, when his grandfather drew him out of his mother's body and told his father that he had a son and heir, a small male child, as pale as his mother and as fragile looking as a snowflake.
Was it really forty-six years ago? In some ways it seems it was hardly yesterday when he was seven, curled up with a book, with Veronica at his side.
Or those days after that respiratory infection, when his mother kept giving him that "medicine", leaving him unable to move, except for his frightened eyes. Or that fateful day when he couldn't find Veronica anywhere: "Mother, where's Veronica? You didn't throw her away, did you?"
Muraki, in the present, sitting in the library in an armchair by the fire, shakes himself out of these dark memories, pushing himself past them to the brighter ones: the day that he met Ukyou, when he was thirteen and she was eleven, and she did not stare at him with his pale hair and skin; meeting Oriya Mibu, his first day at Shion University's affiliated high school, when the larger boy pulled a bullying classmate off him; the halcyon day when he was fifteen and Ukyou let him caress her face for the first time; or the hot August afternoon, when he lay in Oriya's arms, drowsy with their coupling and the scent of his friend's long hair.
But even these pleasant memories lead to dark paths: the term he spent at the school of St. Michel in Nagasaki, when he first discovered where his heart ran, and what the Christians taught about such things, and how well they really practiced what they preached; his sixteenth birthday, when his father pack him off to a back room of Kokakurou, where a prostitute waited to "straighten him out". Then a few days later, when his father had another surprise for him, that he had a half-brother a few weeks older than he was, Saki, and that this bane of his existence had come to live with them...
He shakes himself again, returning his attention to the glass of scotch on the low table at his side, a toast to better days gone by and to years yet to come...
So, have a thoughtful, nostalgic Muraki. He's likely to be a bit evasive about the darker memories that haunt him. Looking for friends, lovers and members of his unofficial household.
This is likely the last time I open post Muraki here on the comm. I'm putting him on request-only status: I'll punt him to someone's open post/introduction only if asked specifically.
Was it really forty-six years ago? In some ways it seems it was hardly yesterday when he was seven, curled up with a book, with Veronica at his side.
Or those days after that respiratory infection, when his mother kept giving him that "medicine", leaving him unable to move, except for his frightened eyes. Or that fateful day when he couldn't find Veronica anywhere: "Mother, where's Veronica? You didn't throw her away, did you?"
Muraki, in the present, sitting in the library in an armchair by the fire, shakes himself out of these dark memories, pushing himself past them to the brighter ones: the day that he met Ukyou, when he was thirteen and she was eleven, and she did not stare at him with his pale hair and skin; meeting Oriya Mibu, his first day at Shion University's affiliated high school, when the larger boy pulled a bullying classmate off him; the halcyon day when he was fifteen and Ukyou let him caress her face for the first time; or the hot August afternoon, when he lay in Oriya's arms, drowsy with their coupling and the scent of his friend's long hair.
But even these pleasant memories lead to dark paths: the term he spent at the school of St. Michel in Nagasaki, when he first discovered where his heart ran, and what the Christians taught about such things, and how well they really practiced what they preached; his sixteenth birthday, when his father pack him off to a back room of Kokakurou, where a prostitute waited to "straighten him out". Then a few days later, when his father had another surprise for him, that he had a half-brother a few weeks older than he was, Saki, and that this bane of his existence had come to live with them...
He shakes himself again, returning his attention to the glass of scotch on the low table at his side, a toast to better days gone by and to years yet to come...
So, have a thoughtful, nostalgic Muraki. He's likely to be a bit evasive about the darker memories that haunt him. Looking for friends, lovers and members of his unofficial household.
This is likely the last time I open post Muraki here on the comm. I'm putting him on request-only status: I'll punt him to someone's open post/introduction only if asked specifically.