look at me, i finished a fic (on time) for this lovely pairing! ♥
Title: Our Last Goodbye
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: subtle Mikami/Naomi. Mikami, Naomi; mentions of Ms. Mikami, Raye, and Kira.
Warnings: I messed with the storyline a bit, and took some creative liberties with Raye and his burial place.
Word Count: 4,396
Author’s Note: Wait, am I late? For Week #29, Wedding. (I guess this could work for crack pairings, too?)
In which I actually make a fic related to one of my canon? what canon? OTPs. This piece references Adventures of a Neurotic Courtesy Clerk in the respect that Mikami and Naomi have (briefly) encountered each other before.
The title comes from The Game by Lacuna Coil. Written for dn_contest, Week #50 - Revisit.
(He shuffled through his bag in frantic desperation as he tried to find his glasses case. This was his fourth time searching for it in his bag-not the third time, because that was an odd number and he refused to settle for just a measly, unholy, third search-and a nagging voice in the back of his head was telling him that it was useless because he never kept the case in his bag. He always had it in the inner pocket of his overcoat for easy use, right next to his pen and some tissues.)
“The wedding can be extravagant! We can invite all of your extended family as well as mine-though, well, mine isn’t nearly as huge as yours. I do have family that live in Nebraska, but they’re pretty estranged and…”
“Raye, the wedding doesn’t have to be so ornate. I would rather we have a traditional ceremony and-”
(Naturally there was no luck. That nagging voice was always right. It had been right the time when he was eight and had gotten sick because he hadn’t spent a whole forty seconds washing his hands, and it was right now, too. There was just no way his glasses case could be lost in the bag. His bag was just too perfectly, too painstakingly organized-his textbooks lined up according to his schedule, color-coordinated notebooks that held only college-ruled binder paper, and a ruler in case he needed to underline something in his textbook. He neglected the use of highlighters because they were too permanent. His books may have been used, but they were precious, and as such he had spent hours erasing all the pencil marks made by the previous owners.)
“We’re going to fly your family all the way from Japan to America and you want something traditional? The least we can do is have a memorable ceremony that no one will forget. ”
“Raye, watch where you’re going.”
(Now he had two choices: he could either backtrack to the law school and hope that luck-illogical as though it was-would allow him to reclaim his lost case, or he could manage without it for one night and check the lost and found tomorrow. The latter was clearly the most rational choice; he was already pressed for time and had to get to the coffee shop before he was late-which, for him, was being exactly on time since he liked to get their a few minutes early to-
“Raye!”
-avoid potential accidents.)
He stumbled back, felt himself grope blindly at the open air to keep from falling onto the concrete. A hand reached out and touched his arm delicately, not quite enough to give him back his balance, but somehow enough to keep him off the concrete. A long moment of hopeless staggering and jumbled confusion later, he realized that his book bag was on the concrete…and that he couldn’t see properly, which meant that his glasses had been thrown off in the collision, too.
“Sorry,” he said automatically-which was absurd, since this wasn’t his fault.
“Er…oh, sorry about that,” he heard someone mutter, but he was too busy trying to gather the textbooks that had scattered themselves across the concrete to do anything but apologize.
“Sorry,” he repeated.
“This isn’t your fault”-he glanced up just as the blurred figure (of a woman?) stooped down to help him gather his things-“Please forgive him. He wasn’t watching where he was going.” Her voice was admonishing.
(Not admonishing him, he realized.)
He had to bite his tongue against the inclination to apologize (again). “It’s fine,” he lied coolly. Of course it was not fine at all; his precious textbooks were now covered in dirt, and for all he knew, the pages could have been torn-his notes might have fallen out of his…
He scrambled to get the rest of his things but could see nothing in his reach. His first panicked thought was that he had somehow managed to neglect a gust of wind. But that was ridiculous. Especially when the woman said, “Here,”-why did her voice sound so familiar?-and handed him a neat stack of his textbooks.
“Thank you,” he muttered. He quickly brushed off whatever infinitesimal amount of dust he could from the cover and returned them safely to his bag.
“You’ll probably have to clean those,” she observed regretfully. “I’m very sorry.”
He watched her indistinct figure with a blank expression as she got to her feet (perhaps longer than he should have because the man next to her cleared his throat gruffly) before blinking and glancing away. (So he wasn’t the only one who cleaned his things so meticulously?)
“No. It’s fine. Thank you.” It was supposed to sound reassuring, but it sounded choppy and put-on even to his own ears.
He got to his feet. Smoothed down his overcoat reflexively. Swung his bag over his shoulder. Reached up to push the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose…
…when he realized they weren’t there.
Again he reached down to pick them up off the concrete (hoping they weren’t scratched because a new pair of lenses wasn’t in his budget plan right now) when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Your glasses.” There was a high inflection to her voice, like she was suppressing the urge to laugh.
(He didn’t know why, but this didn’t bother him like it should have.)
He reached out and retrieved the glasses sitting in the palm of her hand. His fingertips touched her palm against his better judgment (he was usually adverse to such contact because of bacterial contamination), and he was startled at how warm it was despite the chilly weather. It was pale-nearly as pale as his-and looked immaculately clean. It occurred to him then that he had seen this hand before (the nagging voice was telling him that he had, and he knew better than to go against it), but he wasn’t sure where. He should have felt ridiculous for recognizing it in the first place.
He should have. But he didn’t.
When he realized he was still staring at her hand (like the neurotic basket case that he was), he glanced away quickly and cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he finally said; he pretended he didn’t feel awkward and repetitive. (Failed miserably, of course.) He busied himself with inspecting his glasses for potential damage instead of looking at her.
“You’re welcome.” Her tone of voice implied that perhaps she had more to say even though she fell silent. He had the outrageous desire to ask her if they had met before. But of course, that was much too forward and he was already running late.
“Your parents are expecting us, Naomi.”
“Oh”-was that (maybe, perhaps) regret he had heard?-“That’s right. Let’s…get going then.”
He put his glasses back on just in time to see the pair leaving. He did not recognize the man (though his tall stature and less-than-authentic accent hinted that he may have been foreign). But the brief glimpse of the woman’s dark hair and fair skin was enough to confirm his suspicions and pacify the voice in the back of his head. He knew for certain that he had seen her-seen this Naomi-somewhere before.
Perhaps she had felt his gaze on her back, or maybe she was just doing it to be polite, but for whatever reason, she abruptly looked over her shoulder at him and offered him a smile (that almost made him drop his books again).
“Take care,” she called to him.
Any normal person would have acknowledged that sentiment with a “You, too,” or a smile, or even a nod. Any normal person would not stare dumbfounded at a woman as he simultaneously wondered if any dandruff was hidden underneath her jet-black hair. Any normal person may even have asked, “Have I ever seen you before?”
But Mikami Teru was not a normal person, so he left in the opposite direction while praying for the safety of his lost glasses case.
-----
He wasn’t sure why he bothered anymore, but here he was at his mother’s gravesite with a bouquet of flowers. (The flowers were more of a nonsensical formality than anything else; his mother had always hated flowers, which was why their backyard used to be teeming with filthy weeds.) It was the ninth-or was it the tenth? did it really matter?-year anniversary of his mother’s death, but at the same time it felt like an ordinary day. (Did that make him a bad son?) After having spent so many years on his own, he had all but forgotten what it felt like to have a mother. So he didn’t know why he tried.
Mikami knew that he should say a few words, but in the end he only stooped down (he tucked the folds of his overcoat under his legs so it wouldn’t touch the dirt), and placed the haphazard bouquet onto the mound of dirt covering the remains of that woman: his mother.
“Rest in peace, Sayoko,” he muttered. It felt awkward saying her first name, but calling her mother wouldn’t have been appropriate-it would mean having to acknowledge the fact that these brittle, lifeless bones underneath the dirt had once given life to him.
He knew without glancing down at his watch that his shift at the coffee shop started in two hours; he needed to get back to his apartment and get ready. He left without taking a second glance at the grave, his body suddenly heavy with numbness and fatigue. His legs felt more like lead with each stride, and he had to unfold his arms from his chest because they felt like dead weight.
His eyes were downcast, but from his peripheral vision he could tell there was a funeral taking place. (He wondered who had died-a brother, sister, a mother?) He repositioned the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, neglecting a glance at the ceremony because that would seem like he was intruding.
“…few words by Raye’s fiancée, Naomi.”
Had he heard correct? Had the priest said Naomi? But what were the odds that this would be the Naomi with the immaculately clean hands? He stopped then, his curiosity suddenly overriding that previous inclination not to eavesdrop, and he finally looked up.
She wasn’t facing him-she was turned away, probably looking down at the coffin-but the straight black hair that hung down her shoulders was proof enough; hair that shade of black could not be forgotten so quickly.
“Raye was…killed in action, you see.”
Naomi. He mouthed her name instinctively just as she turned back around. Her gaze met his and she paused, seeming to recognize him just as quickly as he had recognized her. She looked startled-bewildered, even-but he glanced away before she had a chance to do or say anything.
Mikami kept his head low as he proceeded out the narrow gate of the cemetery. His face was warm (he hadn’t counted on her seeing him, and what if she thought he had been eavesdropping?), his mouth was dry, and when he looked down at his hands, they were trembling. He pushed a lock of hair away from his forehead, hoping that moving his hands would stop the shaking. (It didn’t.)
He couldn’t place how he felt-guilty? shameful? regretful?-and that bothered him. He didn’t know why he was feeling this way over a woman he knew close to nothing about; he didn’t even know her last name, and it was by sheer chance that he had found out her first name. There was a part of him that wanted to go back, to tell her I’m sorry your fiancé died. I’m sure he’s in a better place now, but of course he wasn’t going to do that-he couldn’t, it wouldn’t be his place to try and comfort her.
Mikami realized that his jaw had been clenched since leaving the cemetery, and it took almost all of his self-possession just to allow it to slacken.
Angry. Yes, that’s how he felt because why did bad things happen to good people? Why did innocent people like Naomi have to see their loved ones die? He hated it, hated how the world was still rotting and how the innocent continued to suffer as the criminals prevailed. He hoped, begged, prayed that whoever had killed her fiancé would be caught-no, would be disposed of by Kira. Because Mikami knew that Kira was the only answer to this level of devastation, the only stability and voice of reason in this world of disorder and chaos. Kira was justice.
-----
Mikami placed a hand gingerly over his mouth to stifle a yawn. His shift at the coffee shop had exhausted him more than he had expected, and he still had to wait a good half hour before his train to Kyoto arrived. (It was times like these that he wished he could afford to live off-campus.) The subway terminal was nearly deserted, save for an old woman who was knitting something and a couple of teens who Mikami thought looked too shady for their own good.
He took his glasses off and cleaned them with a handkerchief from his coat pocket before carefully setting them aside. Mikami folded his arms across his legs and buried his pounding head between his knees. The scent of laundry detergent from his clothes calmed him, and for a moment he imagined he was in his dorm room, warm between the sheets of his best, his head on a soft pillow that smelled fresh and clean-
“Excuse me, are you okay?”
He wondered who the question was meant for since there were only a few people in the terminal. A moment later he realized that the question was probably meant for him, since he was the one with his forehead pressed against his knees.
“Yes, I am,” he said shortly. When he didn’t receive a reply, Mikami raised his head and looked at the hazed figure through a fringe of his hair. “Yes, I am,” he repeated-and because it couldn’t hurt: “Thank you.”
“Oh, it’s…”-he knit his brows together, set his glasses back onto his face-“Are you…?”
If the situation had been different, if he was the sort of person who found humor in such irony, Mikami would have laughed at himself for being so daft. If he had managed to recognize her voice that day in the city, why had it taken so long to register now?
“Yes,” he said automatically-how stupid; how could he say yes when she didn’t even know his name?
“Yes, it’s me,” he tried again, which sounded mildly better.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” she murmured. He dared to glance at her, found a small (probably forced) smile on her face that contrasted sharply against her bloodshot eyes. Again his jaw tightened and again he had to force it to relax.
“Can I sit down?” she asked him.
He blinked and managed to garble an almost incoherent Yes while nodding for good measure. She sat down clutching some sort of pamphlet, probably from the burial service. Mikami shifted so he sat a polite distance away from her and fumbled awkwardly with the coat on his lap. (He refused to set it down on the bench.) He didn’t understand why she was here at the subway station; the funeral must have ended hours ago, so why hadn’t she already went home? He glanced at her furtively and noticed she had put the pamphlet away and was fiddling with the folds of her black skirt; whether she did it to give herself something to do, or because she disliked the skirt, Mikami did not know.
He wondered if she thought he was rude for not introducing himself. He cleared his throat and extended a hand towards her. “Mikami,” he told her, and then to clarify: “Mikami Teru. We haven’t been introduced properly. Sorry.”
She looked at him, his hand, and then back at him, like she was calculating something. (He hoped his hand didn’t look dirty or skeletal or unappealing.) She took his hand and he tried not to cringe away at the alarmingly cold touch. “Kimura Naomi,” she said finally, reluctantly. She didn’t look him straight in the eyes, and this bothered him.
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. His stomach was knotted and now his hands were getting cold. He looked at her from the corner of his eye and saw that her hands were shaking, which was not reassuring in the slightest. Was she going to…cry? Mikami didn’t know what to do in situations like this-he’d never had to comfort a woman before, much less one who was crying. He wasn’t even sure if he had a tissue to offer her.
“I saw you at the cemetery, too,” she said abruptly. “If this isn’t too personal, did you…? You’ve lost someone too, then?”
He brushed the hair away from his eyes, focused on a random spot in the air so he was looking straight ahead. “My mother,” he replied unequivocally. She shifted beside him, looking at him now; he didn’t have to glance at her to see the look on her face. “No, not recently,” he explained. “She died ten years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
He couldn’t find a sufficient reply so he said nothing. She folded her arms around herself like she was cold, and he felt a twinge of guilt for brushing her off so indelicately.
“I’m sorry about your fiancé,” he said quietly.
He looked at her then, watched as she tucked a strand of hair dark hair behind her ear (it fell back a second later) before answering. “Yes, it was…unexpected,” she murmured, staring at her lap now. “We were actually planning our wedding, you know. It was going to be in February, perhaps even on Valentine’s Day.”
Mikami remembered the snippet of the conversation he had heard, how she and her fiancé had had mixed opinions about the wedding and its theme. “I see,” was the only appropriate remark he could think of.
She opened and closed her mouth once, twice before she finally said something. “He wanted an extravagant wedding”-Mikami noticed that she refused to use his real name-“in a huge, ornate cathedral or a basilica. He wanted only the finest music and the best of food. And do you know what else?-he planned on flying my entire family, even my second and third cousins, all the way to America, and I’m not even close to them. ‘We only really do this once, and I want to make it memorable,’ he told me.” She fell silent and he could tell by the way her eyes brimmed over that she was imagining his face, and he was helpless in trying to comfort her.
“And you?” he prompted softly. “What did you want?”
She looked up at him a little too sharply, like he had said the wrong thing. “What…did I want?” she asked him, bemused.
“Yes,” he reiterated. “You were going to be the bride. Don’t you have a say in matters, too?”
Mikami was surprised (but not displeased) when she suddenly broke out in a smile and laughed softly, like he’d just made a joke. Was she making fun of him? He must have started frowning because her laughter stilled and she touched his arm. (He pretended his heart wasn’t beating against his ribcage as fast as it was.) “No, no. I’m not laughing at you,” she said, answering his unspoken question. “It’s just that…you asked me what I wanted. Your logic is so different from his…from how his was. It’s so practical.”
He still wasn’t sure how this was funny to her, but he didn’t try to understand.
“I wanted something much more traditional.” He knew this of course. “I actually wanted our wedding held in a small church located in the countryside.” He forced himself not to shudder at the thought of how much dirt would be there. “I wanted something quaint and peaceful with just our immediate families, nothing lavish or flamboyant. He had even insisted that my wedding dress be modern and flashy”-she shook her head, like the thought was revolting-“I wanted a simple, comfortable gown.”
A glimpse of her wearing a modest white wedding gown passed through his head, and Mikami had to look away because he suddenly felt warm and uncomfortable. He looked around the terminal and found the old woman from before smiling as she knitted; the teens had moved to a more remote part of the station and were staring at him-at them-and Mikami realized that they probably looked like they were together, on some sort of date. His mouth went dry again and he coughed despite having no need.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He wasn’t expecting her to ask (had hoped she wouldn’t, really), and he nodded hastily. “Allergies,” was the only reasonable excused he could think of.
“Do you still work at the grocery store?”
He decided he was wasting his effort in trying to figure out why she cared. “No, I quit a month or so ago after being accepted into law school. I work at a coffee shop a few blocks from here now.”
“You’re going to become a lawyer.” She sounded impressed.
“A prosecuting attorney,” he clarified politely.
“That is very noble of you,” she acknowledged with a slight (affectionate?) tilt of her head. “Criminals are running amok our society. We need more people with a strong sense of justice to put them in their place and protect…the innocent.” Her voice faltered at the end of that and he knew why.
Her enthusiasm astounded him-he had never met a woman who seemed to value justice so deeply. He suddenly had so many questions that he wanted to ask her-did she think the world was filthy, too? did she believe that the world was full of sinners that were going to be damned? did she support Kira and think he was justice?
But Mikami didn’t get a chance to ask her that, or anything-not even what she did for a living-because the rumbling that he vaguely recalled had steadily gotten louder and now was almost deafening. A flash of panic passed through him until the subway car came to a screeching halt on the tracks. Right. It was a subway station. He had forgotten.
“Oh, this is my train,” she said softly, almost reluctantly.
Mikami stood up with her out of common courtesy even though his legs were weak with fatigue. He didn’t want to admit it to her, admit it to himself that he was disappointed she had to leave so soon. It was odd how much they had talked and how little he still knew about her. He was dangerously close to asking her to stay when she said, with an almost self-conscious air, “Do you have something to ask me before I leave?”
Was he staring?-yes, he was, and he felt like a fool and would have gritted his teeth together if he wasn’t paranoid about it harming his enamel. “No. No, I don’t,” he said, voice unnaturally hoarse. He stepped aside and let her pass. She murmured a thank you and brushed by him; he caught a whiff of flowers-vanilla? both?-and realized the scent would probably have mirrored her wedding bouquet.
Mikami shifted on his feet awkwardly, watching her walk to the entrance with slow but measured strides, gaze forward, eyes narrowed. He wanted to say something, but couldn’t find the right words; his stomach was knotted tighter than before.
“Take care, Naomi-san,” he heard himself say. (Had he really just used her first name?)
She halted. Turned. Looked at him with an expression that was more apologetic than anything.
“You too, Mikami-san,” she told him, again with that faint but still discernible smile. She turned back around, and as she stepped through the entrance, he thought he heard her say Teru, but perhaps that was just his imagination (or wishful thinking).
He sat only when the train had departed, suddenly feeling cold and too alone-the latter of which was strange, since he had always preferred solitude over company. He glanced over to his right and noticed that she had left the pamphlet behind. His first inclination was to take the next train headed to Shinjuku Station and return it to her, but he decided against it. (If he kept it, it would give him a reason to see her again, right?) He picked up the pamphlet instead and turned it over in his hands. It was a wedding invitation-her wedding invitation-printed in English. Raye Penber, so that had been her fiancé’s full name, and hers…Naomi Misora? Misora? So her last name had been a fake, but why?
Mikami opened it and scanned the interior for some clue as to why she had used an alias, but the text just mentioned where the wedding and banquet would be held. Written in sharp, flawless script at the top was a date-27.12.2003.
----
He reread the article twice before it sunk in.
So she was missing, and had been missing since the first of January. But he didn’t believe it. He couldn’t imagine her being missing; her will had been too strong to allow that to be her undoing No, if anything, she had probably been killed-maybe even by the same person who had killed her fiancé. It was ironic, too ironic, and he felt like…no, he didn’t even understand how he felt. There was a sharp pain in his stomach and his chest was tight, like he was trying to hold in something that wasn’t there.
Why should he care, really? He had never known this woman personally. She had lied to him about her name, had somehow been foolish enough to allow herself to be killed. So what did it matter if her hands had been perfectly pale and immaculate? So what did it matter if she had been kind to him? So what did it matter if she had seemed genuinely sorry about his mother’s death? So what did it matter if she had valued justice almost as much as him?
But it did matter, so Mikami Teru found himself cutting out that small picture of her-of Misora Naomi-and placing it in his drawer next to the wedding invitation that would never be sent out.
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: subtle Mikami/Naomi. Mikami, Naomi; mentions of Ms. Mikami, Raye, and Kira.
Warnings: I messed with the storyline a bit, and took some creative liberties with Raye and his burial place.
Word Count: 4,396
Author’s Note: Wait, am I late? For Week #29, Wedding. (I guess this could work for crack pairings, too?)
In which I actually make a fic related to one of my canon? what canon? OTPs. This piece references Adventures of a Neurotic Courtesy Clerk in the respect that Mikami and Naomi have (briefly) encountered each other before.
The title comes from The Game by Lacuna Coil. Written for dn_contest, Week #50 - Revisit.
(He shuffled through his bag in frantic desperation as he tried to find his glasses case. This was his fourth time searching for it in his bag-not the third time, because that was an odd number and he refused to settle for just a measly, unholy, third search-and a nagging voice in the back of his head was telling him that it was useless because he never kept the case in his bag. He always had it in the inner pocket of his overcoat for easy use, right next to his pen and some tissues.)
“The wedding can be extravagant! We can invite all of your extended family as well as mine-though, well, mine isn’t nearly as huge as yours. I do have family that live in Nebraska, but they’re pretty estranged and…”
“Raye, the wedding doesn’t have to be so ornate. I would rather we have a traditional ceremony and-”
(Naturally there was no luck. That nagging voice was always right. It had been right the time when he was eight and had gotten sick because he hadn’t spent a whole forty seconds washing his hands, and it was right now, too. There was just no way his glasses case could be lost in the bag. His bag was just too perfectly, too painstakingly organized-his textbooks lined up according to his schedule, color-coordinated notebooks that held only college-ruled binder paper, and a ruler in case he needed to underline something in his textbook. He neglected the use of highlighters because they were too permanent. His books may have been used, but they were precious, and as such he had spent hours erasing all the pencil marks made by the previous owners.)
“We’re going to fly your family all the way from Japan to America and you want something traditional? The least we can do is have a memorable ceremony that no one will forget. ”
“Raye, watch where you’re going.”
(Now he had two choices: he could either backtrack to the law school and hope that luck-illogical as though it was-would allow him to reclaim his lost case, or he could manage without it for one night and check the lost and found tomorrow. The latter was clearly the most rational choice; he was already pressed for time and had to get to the coffee shop before he was late-which, for him, was being exactly on time since he liked to get their a few minutes early to-
“Raye!”
-avoid potential accidents.)
He stumbled back, felt himself grope blindly at the open air to keep from falling onto the concrete. A hand reached out and touched his arm delicately, not quite enough to give him back his balance, but somehow enough to keep him off the concrete. A long moment of hopeless staggering and jumbled confusion later, he realized that his book bag was on the concrete…and that he couldn’t see properly, which meant that his glasses had been thrown off in the collision, too.
“Sorry,” he said automatically-which was absurd, since this wasn’t his fault.
“Er…oh, sorry about that,” he heard someone mutter, but he was too busy trying to gather the textbooks that had scattered themselves across the concrete to do anything but apologize.
“Sorry,” he repeated.
“This isn’t your fault”-he glanced up just as the blurred figure (of a woman?) stooped down to help him gather his things-“Please forgive him. He wasn’t watching where he was going.” Her voice was admonishing.
(Not admonishing him, he realized.)
He had to bite his tongue against the inclination to apologize (again). “It’s fine,” he lied coolly. Of course it was not fine at all; his precious textbooks were now covered in dirt, and for all he knew, the pages could have been torn-his notes might have fallen out of his…
He scrambled to get the rest of his things but could see nothing in his reach. His first panicked thought was that he had somehow managed to neglect a gust of wind. But that was ridiculous. Especially when the woman said, “Here,”-why did her voice sound so familiar?-and handed him a neat stack of his textbooks.
“Thank you,” he muttered. He quickly brushed off whatever infinitesimal amount of dust he could from the cover and returned them safely to his bag.
“You’ll probably have to clean those,” she observed regretfully. “I’m very sorry.”
He watched her indistinct figure with a blank expression as she got to her feet (perhaps longer than he should have because the man next to her cleared his throat gruffly) before blinking and glancing away. (So he wasn’t the only one who cleaned his things so meticulously?)
“No. It’s fine. Thank you.” It was supposed to sound reassuring, but it sounded choppy and put-on even to his own ears.
He got to his feet. Smoothed down his overcoat reflexively. Swung his bag over his shoulder. Reached up to push the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose…
…when he realized they weren’t there.
Again he reached down to pick them up off the concrete (hoping they weren’t scratched because a new pair of lenses wasn’t in his budget plan right now) when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Your glasses.” There was a high inflection to her voice, like she was suppressing the urge to laugh.
(He didn’t know why, but this didn’t bother him like it should have.)
He reached out and retrieved the glasses sitting in the palm of her hand. His fingertips touched her palm against his better judgment (he was usually adverse to such contact because of bacterial contamination), and he was startled at how warm it was despite the chilly weather. It was pale-nearly as pale as his-and looked immaculately clean. It occurred to him then that he had seen this hand before (the nagging voice was telling him that he had, and he knew better than to go against it), but he wasn’t sure where. He should have felt ridiculous for recognizing it in the first place.
He should have. But he didn’t.
When he realized he was still staring at her hand (like the neurotic basket case that he was), he glanced away quickly and cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he finally said; he pretended he didn’t feel awkward and repetitive. (Failed miserably, of course.) He busied himself with inspecting his glasses for potential damage instead of looking at her.
“You’re welcome.” Her tone of voice implied that perhaps she had more to say even though she fell silent. He had the outrageous desire to ask her if they had met before. But of course, that was much too forward and he was already running late.
“Your parents are expecting us, Naomi.”
“Oh”-was that (maybe, perhaps) regret he had heard?-“That’s right. Let’s…get going then.”
He put his glasses back on just in time to see the pair leaving. He did not recognize the man (though his tall stature and less-than-authentic accent hinted that he may have been foreign). But the brief glimpse of the woman’s dark hair and fair skin was enough to confirm his suspicions and pacify the voice in the back of his head. He knew for certain that he had seen her-seen this Naomi-somewhere before.
Perhaps she had felt his gaze on her back, or maybe she was just doing it to be polite, but for whatever reason, she abruptly looked over her shoulder at him and offered him a smile (that almost made him drop his books again).
“Take care,” she called to him.
Any normal person would have acknowledged that sentiment with a “You, too,” or a smile, or even a nod. Any normal person would not stare dumbfounded at a woman as he simultaneously wondered if any dandruff was hidden underneath her jet-black hair. Any normal person may even have asked, “Have I ever seen you before?”
But Mikami Teru was not a normal person, so he left in the opposite direction while praying for the safety of his lost glasses case.
-----
He wasn’t sure why he bothered anymore, but here he was at his mother’s gravesite with a bouquet of flowers. (The flowers were more of a nonsensical formality than anything else; his mother had always hated flowers, which was why their backyard used to be teeming with filthy weeds.) It was the ninth-or was it the tenth? did it really matter?-year anniversary of his mother’s death, but at the same time it felt like an ordinary day. (Did that make him a bad son?) After having spent so many years on his own, he had all but forgotten what it felt like to have a mother. So he didn’t know why he tried.
Mikami knew that he should say a few words, but in the end he only stooped down (he tucked the folds of his overcoat under his legs so it wouldn’t touch the dirt), and placed the haphazard bouquet onto the mound of dirt covering the remains of that woman: his mother.
“Rest in peace, Sayoko,” he muttered. It felt awkward saying her first name, but calling her mother wouldn’t have been appropriate-it would mean having to acknowledge the fact that these brittle, lifeless bones underneath the dirt had once given life to him.
He knew without glancing down at his watch that his shift at the coffee shop started in two hours; he needed to get back to his apartment and get ready. He left without taking a second glance at the grave, his body suddenly heavy with numbness and fatigue. His legs felt more like lead with each stride, and he had to unfold his arms from his chest because they felt like dead weight.
His eyes were downcast, but from his peripheral vision he could tell there was a funeral taking place. (He wondered who had died-a brother, sister, a mother?) He repositioned the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, neglecting a glance at the ceremony because that would seem like he was intruding.
“…few words by Raye’s fiancée, Naomi.”
Had he heard correct? Had the priest said Naomi? But what were the odds that this would be the Naomi with the immaculately clean hands? He stopped then, his curiosity suddenly overriding that previous inclination not to eavesdrop, and he finally looked up.
She wasn’t facing him-she was turned away, probably looking down at the coffin-but the straight black hair that hung down her shoulders was proof enough; hair that shade of black could not be forgotten so quickly.
“Raye was…killed in action, you see.”
Naomi. He mouthed her name instinctively just as she turned back around. Her gaze met his and she paused, seeming to recognize him just as quickly as he had recognized her. She looked startled-bewildered, even-but he glanced away before she had a chance to do or say anything.
Mikami kept his head low as he proceeded out the narrow gate of the cemetery. His face was warm (he hadn’t counted on her seeing him, and what if she thought he had been eavesdropping?), his mouth was dry, and when he looked down at his hands, they were trembling. He pushed a lock of hair away from his forehead, hoping that moving his hands would stop the shaking. (It didn’t.)
He couldn’t place how he felt-guilty? shameful? regretful?-and that bothered him. He didn’t know why he was feeling this way over a woman he knew close to nothing about; he didn’t even know her last name, and it was by sheer chance that he had found out her first name. There was a part of him that wanted to go back, to tell her I’m sorry your fiancé died. I’m sure he’s in a better place now, but of course he wasn’t going to do that-he couldn’t, it wouldn’t be his place to try and comfort her.
Mikami realized that his jaw had been clenched since leaving the cemetery, and it took almost all of his self-possession just to allow it to slacken.
Angry. Yes, that’s how he felt because why did bad things happen to good people? Why did innocent people like Naomi have to see their loved ones die? He hated it, hated how the world was still rotting and how the innocent continued to suffer as the criminals prevailed. He hoped, begged, prayed that whoever had killed her fiancé would be caught-no, would be disposed of by Kira. Because Mikami knew that Kira was the only answer to this level of devastation, the only stability and voice of reason in this world of disorder and chaos. Kira was justice.
-----
Mikami placed a hand gingerly over his mouth to stifle a yawn. His shift at the coffee shop had exhausted him more than he had expected, and he still had to wait a good half hour before his train to Kyoto arrived. (It was times like these that he wished he could afford to live off-campus.) The subway terminal was nearly deserted, save for an old woman who was knitting something and a couple of teens who Mikami thought looked too shady for their own good.
He took his glasses off and cleaned them with a handkerchief from his coat pocket before carefully setting them aside. Mikami folded his arms across his legs and buried his pounding head between his knees. The scent of laundry detergent from his clothes calmed him, and for a moment he imagined he was in his dorm room, warm between the sheets of his best, his head on a soft pillow that smelled fresh and clean-
“Excuse me, are you okay?”
He wondered who the question was meant for since there were only a few people in the terminal. A moment later he realized that the question was probably meant for him, since he was the one with his forehead pressed against his knees.
“Yes, I am,” he said shortly. When he didn’t receive a reply, Mikami raised his head and looked at the hazed figure through a fringe of his hair. “Yes, I am,” he repeated-and because it couldn’t hurt: “Thank you.”
“Oh, it’s…”-he knit his brows together, set his glasses back onto his face-“Are you…?”
If the situation had been different, if he was the sort of person who found humor in such irony, Mikami would have laughed at himself for being so daft. If he had managed to recognize her voice that day in the city, why had it taken so long to register now?
“Yes,” he said automatically-how stupid; how could he say yes when she didn’t even know his name?
“Yes, it’s me,” he tried again, which sounded mildly better.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” she murmured. He dared to glance at her, found a small (probably forced) smile on her face that contrasted sharply against her bloodshot eyes. Again his jaw tightened and again he had to force it to relax.
“Can I sit down?” she asked him.
He blinked and managed to garble an almost incoherent Yes while nodding for good measure. She sat down clutching some sort of pamphlet, probably from the burial service. Mikami shifted so he sat a polite distance away from her and fumbled awkwardly with the coat on his lap. (He refused to set it down on the bench.) He didn’t understand why she was here at the subway station; the funeral must have ended hours ago, so why hadn’t she already went home? He glanced at her furtively and noticed she had put the pamphlet away and was fiddling with the folds of her black skirt; whether she did it to give herself something to do, or because she disliked the skirt, Mikami did not know.
He wondered if she thought he was rude for not introducing himself. He cleared his throat and extended a hand towards her. “Mikami,” he told her, and then to clarify: “Mikami Teru. We haven’t been introduced properly. Sorry.”
She looked at him, his hand, and then back at him, like she was calculating something. (He hoped his hand didn’t look dirty or skeletal or unappealing.) She took his hand and he tried not to cringe away at the alarmingly cold touch. “Kimura Naomi,” she said finally, reluctantly. She didn’t look him straight in the eyes, and this bothered him.
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. His stomach was knotted and now his hands were getting cold. He looked at her from the corner of his eye and saw that her hands were shaking, which was not reassuring in the slightest. Was she going to…cry? Mikami didn’t know what to do in situations like this-he’d never had to comfort a woman before, much less one who was crying. He wasn’t even sure if he had a tissue to offer her.
“I saw you at the cemetery, too,” she said abruptly. “If this isn’t too personal, did you…? You’ve lost someone too, then?”
He brushed the hair away from his eyes, focused on a random spot in the air so he was looking straight ahead. “My mother,” he replied unequivocally. She shifted beside him, looking at him now; he didn’t have to glance at her to see the look on her face. “No, not recently,” he explained. “She died ten years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
He couldn’t find a sufficient reply so he said nothing. She folded her arms around herself like she was cold, and he felt a twinge of guilt for brushing her off so indelicately.
“I’m sorry about your fiancé,” he said quietly.
He looked at her then, watched as she tucked a strand of hair dark hair behind her ear (it fell back a second later) before answering. “Yes, it was…unexpected,” she murmured, staring at her lap now. “We were actually planning our wedding, you know. It was going to be in February, perhaps even on Valentine’s Day.”
Mikami remembered the snippet of the conversation he had heard, how she and her fiancé had had mixed opinions about the wedding and its theme. “I see,” was the only appropriate remark he could think of.
She opened and closed her mouth once, twice before she finally said something. “He wanted an extravagant wedding”-Mikami noticed that she refused to use his real name-“in a huge, ornate cathedral or a basilica. He wanted only the finest music and the best of food. And do you know what else?-he planned on flying my entire family, even my second and third cousins, all the way to America, and I’m not even close to them. ‘We only really do this once, and I want to make it memorable,’ he told me.” She fell silent and he could tell by the way her eyes brimmed over that she was imagining his face, and he was helpless in trying to comfort her.
“And you?” he prompted softly. “What did you want?”
She looked up at him a little too sharply, like he had said the wrong thing. “What…did I want?” she asked him, bemused.
“Yes,” he reiterated. “You were going to be the bride. Don’t you have a say in matters, too?”
Mikami was surprised (but not displeased) when she suddenly broke out in a smile and laughed softly, like he’d just made a joke. Was she making fun of him? He must have started frowning because her laughter stilled and she touched his arm. (He pretended his heart wasn’t beating against his ribcage as fast as it was.) “No, no. I’m not laughing at you,” she said, answering his unspoken question. “It’s just that…you asked me what I wanted. Your logic is so different from his…from how his was. It’s so practical.”
He still wasn’t sure how this was funny to her, but he didn’t try to understand.
“I wanted something much more traditional.” He knew this of course. “I actually wanted our wedding held in a small church located in the countryside.” He forced himself not to shudder at the thought of how much dirt would be there. “I wanted something quaint and peaceful with just our immediate families, nothing lavish or flamboyant. He had even insisted that my wedding dress be modern and flashy”-she shook her head, like the thought was revolting-“I wanted a simple, comfortable gown.”
A glimpse of her wearing a modest white wedding gown passed through his head, and Mikami had to look away because he suddenly felt warm and uncomfortable. He looked around the terminal and found the old woman from before smiling as she knitted; the teens had moved to a more remote part of the station and were staring at him-at them-and Mikami realized that they probably looked like they were together, on some sort of date. His mouth went dry again and he coughed despite having no need.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He wasn’t expecting her to ask (had hoped she wouldn’t, really), and he nodded hastily. “Allergies,” was the only reasonable excused he could think of.
“Do you still work at the grocery store?”
He decided he was wasting his effort in trying to figure out why she cared. “No, I quit a month or so ago after being accepted into law school. I work at a coffee shop a few blocks from here now.”
“You’re going to become a lawyer.” She sounded impressed.
“A prosecuting attorney,” he clarified politely.
“That is very noble of you,” she acknowledged with a slight (affectionate?) tilt of her head. “Criminals are running amok our society. We need more people with a strong sense of justice to put them in their place and protect…the innocent.” Her voice faltered at the end of that and he knew why.
Her enthusiasm astounded him-he had never met a woman who seemed to value justice so deeply. He suddenly had so many questions that he wanted to ask her-did she think the world was filthy, too? did she believe that the world was full of sinners that were going to be damned? did she support Kira and think he was justice?
But Mikami didn’t get a chance to ask her that, or anything-not even what she did for a living-because the rumbling that he vaguely recalled had steadily gotten louder and now was almost deafening. A flash of panic passed through him until the subway car came to a screeching halt on the tracks. Right. It was a subway station. He had forgotten.
“Oh, this is my train,” she said softly, almost reluctantly.
Mikami stood up with her out of common courtesy even though his legs were weak with fatigue. He didn’t want to admit it to her, admit it to himself that he was disappointed she had to leave so soon. It was odd how much they had talked and how little he still knew about her. He was dangerously close to asking her to stay when she said, with an almost self-conscious air, “Do you have something to ask me before I leave?”
Was he staring?-yes, he was, and he felt like a fool and would have gritted his teeth together if he wasn’t paranoid about it harming his enamel. “No. No, I don’t,” he said, voice unnaturally hoarse. He stepped aside and let her pass. She murmured a thank you and brushed by him; he caught a whiff of flowers-vanilla? both?-and realized the scent would probably have mirrored her wedding bouquet.
Mikami shifted on his feet awkwardly, watching her walk to the entrance with slow but measured strides, gaze forward, eyes narrowed. He wanted to say something, but couldn’t find the right words; his stomach was knotted tighter than before.
“Take care, Naomi-san,” he heard himself say. (Had he really just used her first name?)
She halted. Turned. Looked at him with an expression that was more apologetic than anything.
“You too, Mikami-san,” she told him, again with that faint but still discernible smile. She turned back around, and as she stepped through the entrance, he thought he heard her say Teru, but perhaps that was just his imagination (or wishful thinking).
He sat only when the train had departed, suddenly feeling cold and too alone-the latter of which was strange, since he had always preferred solitude over company. He glanced over to his right and noticed that she had left the pamphlet behind. His first inclination was to take the next train headed to Shinjuku Station and return it to her, but he decided against it. (If he kept it, it would give him a reason to see her again, right?) He picked up the pamphlet instead and turned it over in his hands. It was a wedding invitation-her wedding invitation-printed in English. Raye Penber, so that had been her fiancé’s full name, and hers…Naomi Misora? Misora? So her last name had been a fake, but why?
Mikami opened it and scanned the interior for some clue as to why she had used an alias, but the text just mentioned where the wedding and banquet would be held. Written in sharp, flawless script at the top was a date-27.12.2003.
----
He reread the article twice before it sunk in.
So she was missing, and had been missing since the first of January. But he didn’t believe it. He couldn’t imagine her being missing; her will had been too strong to allow that to be her undoing No, if anything, she had probably been killed-maybe even by the same person who had killed her fiancé. It was ironic, too ironic, and he felt like…no, he didn’t even understand how he felt. There was a sharp pain in his stomach and his chest was tight, like he was trying to hold in something that wasn’t there.
Why should he care, really? He had never known this woman personally. She had lied to him about her name, had somehow been foolish enough to allow herself to be killed. So what did it matter if her hands had been perfectly pale and immaculate? So what did it matter if she had been kind to him? So what did it matter if she had seemed genuinely sorry about his mother’s death? So what did it matter if she had valued justice almost as much as him?
But it did matter, so Mikami Teru found himself cutting out that small picture of her-of Misora Naomi-and placing it in his drawer next to the wedding invitation that would never be sent out.