Now and Forever...Itsumademo... - Chapter 13A
Title: Now and Forever…いつまでも…
Author: Mayonaka no Taiyou/Unare Haineko
Pairing: [Juntoshi] Matsumoto Jun x Ohno Satoshi
Rating: R-ish.
Summary: This story follows Ayumu, a more or less normal child born in 2012, three years after the ending of ‘Kodoku kara Umareta Ai’ (which you can read here). His parents, Jun and Ohno, are everything ( Read more... )
The only sign that she attracted any attention from the nearly empty bus came from her client. And even then, he failed to notice her until he felt the seat beside him compress with air at someone settling into it. As there were many other seats available, it struck him as odd that someone should want to sit beside him. It was then that he looked askance at the figure.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, momentarily forgetting himself at the sight of his therapist sitting beside him, playing idly with the inlaid silver handle of the cane.
“Is this how you thank me for coming all this way to see you, Mr Matsumoto?” she playfully returned, crossing her legs and tilting her head towards him. “Well, what’s the emergency that you made an appointment last night to be my first port of call today?”
“I’ve been thinking…” he began, looking out the window as he handed the devil the photographs he had been viewing. “When I look at what I am now and what I was then, I don’t seem to have changed much. And then when I look at what I have now and what I had then, I realise that I hardly recognise myself. It’s like there’s this feeling of sombre, frightening darkness pervading everything and I can’t see through it.”
“So you feel like you’re lost in a dark, impenetrable mist stealthily closing around you. Big deal,” she replied blandly, looking through the photographs. “It’s been closing you for years. High time you noticed it.”
“You’re a devil, sensei, you don’t know about fear,” he retaliated with the full force of his frustrated ire. “I feel like something black and hooded is standing behind my shoulder, watching and waiting.”
“That would be me or one of my minions,” said her ladyship casually, examining the dog-eared photograph of Arashi
“No, it’s not you. You give off a frightening but aggregational aura. This feeling is different. This time, it feels like the ground I step on will turn into quicksand and swallow me. This kind of fear and uncertainty is blighting and scary as hell.”
“Feel that you’ve lost your life’s work, have you?” she sneered, curling her lips contemptuously as she flicked her fingers against the photograph of Arashi. “Feeling desolate, broken hearted, ready to scream at Fate? It’s too late for that. The infernal contract was signed in 2009, remember. When you signed that contract, you promised yourself and Mr Ohno that you would build your lives together and not look back. Or have you forgotten?”
MatsuJun looked at her with eyes that were dark and heavy with fatigue. “I remember,” he said between clenched teeth and tightly balled fists as he folded his arms and glared at the devil. “At first, I wanted to forget all about the jimusho, forget about Kitagawa, forget about Arashi and just live quietly with Leader. I thought that it would mean freedom, that Leader and I could be left alone, that we wouldn’t have to be harried by people we didn’t like, that we wouldn’t have to be driven to do things we didn’t want to know. But now, all that tastes like evaporated champagne and I’m remembering half-forgotten things.”
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“Come again?” he snapped out of his guilt trip and glowered at her, perplexed as to why she was suddenly drawing a meaningless analogy.
“You’ve been going round and round on this route for the past six hours, and you’ve been wallowing in the same thoughts for the past six hours,” she crisply pointed out, rapping his knee painfully with the silver handle of her cane. “What does that tell you?”
He glared daggers at her when she rapped his knee again. “That hurts if you don’t know. If you don’t stop…”
“Are threats are all you’re good at? Look at yourself,” she spat, dropping the photographs in his lap as she seized his chin and forced him to stare at his reflection in the glass window. “Wallowing and making yourself miserable without realising why. Pathetic! Is this what you have become? Someone who can only internalise the past?”
“What can I do when I’m the moron who pulled the down the edifice of the mountain and brought that world crashing around my ears and that of my friends?” he snapped angrily as much at himself as it was against his therapist.
“About bloody time you realised you were responsible for the Gotterdammerung,” she rejoined in accents of feigned hopeful excitement. “Look at yourself, Mr Matsumoto, you played God and you brought about the cataclysmic downfall of the past you are now bemoaning. Go over the dead and see if there’s anything you can loot. Let’s see if there’s anything that escaped the conflagration you so eagerly started,”
“Don’t you start, sensei!” he snarled, feeling a sickening feeling tightening around his stomach and constricting his throat.
Her ladyship’s mouth quivered and then broke into a scornful smirk as she lilted quietly, “I haven’t started.” Relinquishing her grip on his chin, she removed the inland silver handle of her cane and told him, “Hold this for me. Your problem right now is that you’ve done nothing but look back ever since you came away to find yourself. That’s all very good and well, but you know the trouble when you look back? It hurts because it drags at your heart till you can’t ever do anything but look back. That’s what has happened to you - you can’t look forward anymore. You can’t see the present even though you have Ayumu and your precious Mr Ohno. That’s why you ran from it. You couldn’t see the present because you were so caught up in the past. You can’t see the future because you fear what it will bring, especially since there’s that infernal 2009 contract hanging over your head.”
“It’s just that I’m trying to see where it all went wrong. It’s all my fault, sensei,” he sighed bitterly and would have expiated further on the issue when a stinging clasp clamped over his fingers caused him to hiss in pain. Looking down at his hands, he saw that the handle of her ladyship’s cane had caught his fingers in a simple finger-clamp device. “What’s this?” he demanded, staring at her in the manner that a basilisk might look at its prey.
Unperturbed, she raised a brow and covered her mouth daintily as she chuckled softly, “Since you keep harping on how you singlehandedly brought about the destruction and dissolution of Arashi, I thought I might show you how your hands did the black, bloody deed. Ingenious of me, even if I do say so myself.”
“It’s not true, sensei,” he protested tetchily, “I do look to future and think about Ayumu.”
“I mean about yourself and Mr Ohno. Don’t you look to the future and see what’s there for you and Mr Ohno?” she threw back at him. When Jun looked away, unable to answer her query, she snorted with a lopsided knowing smirk. “Exactly - you don’t see anything because you fear the future. You fled from the present because you can’t see it. Want to know why? You created the Gotterdammerung.”
“What is it - this Gotterdammerung?” he asked, both irritated and intrigued by the devil’s mode of talking around things.
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“It was fun - those days. They were happy and not like the kind of happiness I have now with Ayumu and Leader, but the kind of quiet, charm that is lost forever,” he groaned from the heartache of recalling Arashi and in physical pain from the torture on his fingers.
“Is all your happiness in the past?” she jeered, pulling the strings and tightening the finger screws so that his filaments would be both twisted and crushed. “If it is, then look back all you want. Keep at it and you will keep company with pain and discontent on a permanent level.”
“Discontent?” Jun’s ears pricked up at that word in spite of the pain coursing from his fingers. “That’s what I’m feeling now.”
“That’s what fallen angels and gods feel when they’ve been hurtled out of heaven and Valhalla,” she said with a wry, rueful smile whilst manoeuvring the strings of the finger screws to spread his digits as they sought to pull his fingers from his hands.
“I threw everyone I cared about out of that piece of ‘heaven’ and I dare not look back.” He grimaced through the pain and stared at his swollen fingers in fascination. “It’s okay if it’s just me in life exile. But I’ve dragged Leader down with me, and then got Nino in a jam too and Sho and Aiba too….”
Then adopting a harsher note, she acerbically reminded him, “You’ve created a Gotterdammerung and lived through it. It’s time you look at what’s left. Look at what you’ve done in the face and call it by its proper name. The dusk of the gods, Mr Matsumoto - you lot in Arashi did play God didn’t you. Mr Ninomiya out of misguided jealousy; Mr Ohno out of misguided lust; and you out of misguided affection for all whom you regard as friends.”
“What else could I have done?” he levelled angrily at her, making an ugly noise as the devil pulled at the finger screws.
“Yes, what could you have done?” her ladyship mocked, winding the strings around his fingers and tearing into the swollen flesh there. Pulling hard, she smiled almost benignly and remarked conversationally, “The Gotterdammerung marked the end of a civilisation that the gods have created. It is always inevitable because the gods will fight with one another over some intrigue or the other. When the Gotterdammerung is done, what do you have lot? Disjointed noise, shattered plots and discordant music.”
“What good will that do me to look at the mess around me? Don’t you think I know what I’ve done?” he tore out at her in irritable frustration.
“Fool!” she hissed in visible annoyance, tugging at the finger screw strings and making Jun cry out in pain. “If a civilisation can be destroyed, it can also be rebuilt. If the noise is disjointed, you can tune it so that the noise becomes a melody. If the plot is shattered, salvage what you can from it and create a better one. If the music is discordant, you can play it again in a style entirely new.”
“Easier said than done,” Jun snorted dismissively as his face contorted from the pain in his hands. “I don’t have the energy to that, not when I know that I blight everything I touch.”
“Awww…” her ladyship cooed, holding the finger screw strings in one hand and grabbing his chin with her other. “Poor little MatsuJun destroys everything he touch. Then why hasn’t he destroyed himself yet, hmm? If you’re brittle, you have broken long before now. You’re still here, what does that tell you?”
“I muddled through,” he said disconsolately.
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“What is that supposed to mean?” he retorted, getting steadily confused with all the tommyrot her ladyship was talking about on dead gods and dead civilisations being rebuilt.
“Do I have to spell everything out?” Lady Strange enquired with specious vacuity as she pulled the finger screws taunt and replaced the silver handle in her cane. Idly plucking at the tight strings leading from her cane to Jun’s bound fingers, she bite back mordantly, “Look at Messrs Sakurai and Aiba - forced to deal with the breakup of Arashi but making it through with brains and grit so as to make something of themselves in the entertainment business.”
“But they didn’t offend Kitagawa!” rejoined Jun, squirming his fingers and further entrenching the strings into his welted and bleeding fingers.
Unperturbed by this outburst, she went on placidly, “Look at Mr Ninomiya - forced to disappear for a few years but he made it back because he had the brains and balls to face his own sadness and shit so as to make something of himself.”
“He’s stubborn like a cockroach. He wouldn’t die,” tossed out the aggrieved MatsuJun, looking at his injured hands.
Pointedly ignoring this ejaculation, her ladyship lilted her voice unpleasantly, “What about you and Mr Ohno, hmm? What have you done to make something of yourselves? Producing young Ayumu the walking pustule doesn’t count by the way.” She paused and unsuccessfully held back a snigger at the mournful gaze Jun settled on her. “Nothing! You’ve done nothing! You’re letting yourself be winnowed out. Ever since that 2009 contract, you and Mr Ohno sheltered yourselves from other people. What happened to the Matsumoto Jun who would seize life by the horns and twist it to his will?”
“I… Sensei, you don’t understand… The contract…” were the few words he managed to disjointed counter.
“Bah!” she smoothly cut in with a vicious snarl, “Cease your snivelling. Your posturing and gesturing at the curtains do nothing but rouse the deepest contempt from me.”
“I find me contemptuous too,” he smiled bitterly through the pain in his throbbing and bleeding fingers.
“Only now when you’ve hidden your true self away?” she sneered, pinching his cheek painfully into a full twist with her fingernails. “You don’t know where you fit in the world anymore because you need to hide your true self away. You’ve resigned that self where you would twist life to bend to your will. You blame that self for dissolving Arashi. That’s why you’ve consigned it to the flames along with your bridges. You don’t want to face your true self because it’s hidden somewhere in the foundations of the bridges you’ve burnt. Why won’t you look at what’s left of the foundations? What are you so afraid of seeing?”
“Sensei, the bridges are gone!” he quipped, floundering in a bewilderment.
“But not the foundations. Fires hardly ever reach deep into the ground where the foundations of bridges are cast. Look past the ashes and see what’s left. It’s either that or be winnowed out. Which will it be?” she hissed, plucking out an old madrigal on the strings of the finger screws.
“It’s not that simple!” he protested, watching her ladyship pull the bell for the bus to stop at the next station.
“No?” she queried with a hard, unrelenting glint behind her glasses as she retracted the strings from the finger screws back into the cane. “Let me help - either grow some balls and come through the quagmire of this Gotterdammerung, or be winnowed out. You choose. If you chose to grow balls, look at what’s left of the burning bridges and look for the foundations. If you want to be winnowed out, then head straight to the Ninth Circle.”
He tried to pipe up as the bus screeched to a halt and the doors slowly folded opened. “Sensei, I can’t….”
“This is my stop. I’ll see you when I see you,” her ladyship coldly informed him, tipping her hat. Then without a second glance, she alighted and disappeared from view.
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So far:
(1) Jun can’t see the present and that frightened him, so he ran off to find himself.
(2) Because he can’t see the present, he can’t plan for the future. That’s when he looks back in the past to find himself. Why does he do this? Because he buried the side of him (his true self as it were) that brought the 2009 contract into being. He knows that on some unconscious level. Jun needs to find that old self again before he can (i) clearly see the present, (ii) mend/rebuild the bridges, and (iii) plan his next move.
(3) Until he finds himself in the past, reconciles that self (which he has buried) with his present, can he place himself in the future.
So far only points (1) and half of point (2) have been addressed. There’s the other half of point (2) and point (3) Jun has to come to if he really wants to make something of himself. The man finally realises he has burnt the bridges. But he still refuses to look back because he fears turning into a pillar of salt and dissolving away in the air. Fool doesn’t realise that he has to look back all the way and see what’s left if he is to (a) salvage the situation, and (b) reclaim the self that he left behind. It’s a matter of digging up the foundations of the bridges and making sense of that foundation. But that fellow is a stubborn arse, so his self-reflection is slow. Perfectly realistic as far as I’m concerned.
The whole Juntoshi ‘action’ you so delicately referred to is indeed the cause of Ohno’s problems. Clearly the lack of ‘action’ has worked no hardship on Jun. Why? (A) That’s because Jun-boy has not been thinking about sex. (B) Why hasn’t he thought about sex? Because he’s been thinking about truly meaningful things. (C) This means that Jun values the other things in interpersonal relationships such as an exchange of idea, conversation, understanding, respect and quiet companionship above and over sex. Those points of (A) to (C) are the lessons Ohno have yet to learn.
Besides the whole Jun reflection in his bucolic ryokan allows Ohno to have his long overdue self-reflection. And Ohno badly needs reflection to smack him between the eyes as well as a healthy dose of self-realisation to be rammed down his throat if he is to ever have an epiphany about the value of (A) to (C).
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I am annoyed right now. I am sitting in Starbucks waiting for my friend to get off work so we can get dinner and there are these public school (no offense to those graduated from public learning institutions, but the ones where I come from are ghetto. I believe my state has some of the worst public schools in the country) middle school kids with nothing better to do than hang out at Starbucks yapping away. They are so loud and obnoxious. No substance to their conversation. Some of them are 'washing their hands' with the water pitcher water on the counter another is stealing the creamer and sugar packets....What a bother!
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Meh. The vacuous specimens of schooling youngsters - unsophisticated and uncouth philistines! Coffee/tea houses are for nibbling on cakes, sipping beverages and reading or writing. Not being a barbarian.
Washing their hands with the water from the pitcher! Shameless! Stealing sugar packets... I did that when I was in pre-uni and we were in worse financial straits then. It was how we got our sugar at home. Stinginess is one of my defining traits I'm afraid.
I'm hoping to clear my ghostwriting project so that I can go back to writing my own fic, editing yours and heading out to have sushi which I've been abstaining from since March.
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Yes, those brats at Starbucks were so annoying. And then they went outside to take silly pictures of themselves after the store closed. Stealing the sugar packets is not so bad if you just take a few more than you need here and there, but what I was getting upset at was the fact that they were opening them on the counter and spilling them all over the tables for no good reason. Waste! I can't stand food waste! That and those poor hardworking staff members had to clean up that stuff as well. Wasting time, energy, and money. *bangs head on table* I wouldn't say your case was of stinginess, more like frugality and resourcefulness, unlike those bastards. *shakes her fist at them*
No sushi for three months?! *weeps and sends fatty tuna from her side of the pond*
Damn it. I just gave away a small hint about Jun's next move didn't I? *bangs head on brick wall* IDIOTA!!!!! Oh well, I'll let your mind go wild with anticipation while I write the next chapter.
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Food waste is bad. I used to attend academic conferences and they would feed the attendees. I always swiped the leftovers home. People are starving in Ethiopia and Africa and those kiddies waste things. Tsk tsk. Just what kind of world is this.
If you knew the list of my ailments... heh...
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I am only allergic to the raw tomatoes and they not only make me nauseous, I get these weird hives and basically it's a miserable day for me. I'm not sure if it's the type of tomato or the pesticides, but all I know is that they make me ill. I also get this reaction when I eat shellfish that isn't totally cooked. I think the only other allergy that people never believe me on is my allergy to Christmas trees--so fir trees? A couple of hours in an enclosed space and I'll be down for the count...this suceptibility to allergies comes from the NCP's side... *sigh*
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