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 curricle, which was built on sporting lines, was drawn by a team of four magnificent soot black geldings, and the ribbons were in the hands of one of the most noted whips of hell - the Lady Strange. Everyone in hell but the most uncouth of bumpkins would have immediately identified the pallid woman at the reins through the black coat dress and red underskirt and garland braided hair as the Mistress of the Eighth-and-A-Half Circle of hell. Happily, however, for her ladyship’s peace of mind, she was travelling an evil pace through the mortal realm and was unnoticed by any one. Due to the freshness of the horseflesh, she made good time.
By the time she arrived at the university campus, she was greeted by the sight of her friend, the honourable Miss Unare Haineko the Mistress of the Fifth Circle of Hell, leading nonchalantly against a pillar. “I had despaired of you turning up.”
“No such luck today,” she explained with due curtness upon stepping down from the curricle. “Here for more yakitori a la Sakurai, Haineko?”
“I was in the area and thought I’d drop by. There are lovely plant specimens here or so I’ve heard from my emissaries,” remarked Miss Unare as she linked arms with Lady Strange.
The striking pair sauntered their way into the Literature department proper, drawing no notice from any students. When they finally arrived at the garden abutting Annex 8, they stopped not just to admire the various specimens but because one Mr Sakurai was seated on a bench and looking pensive.
“A penny for your thoughts?” ventured Miss Unare, as she tapped the man on his shoulder effectively starting him out of his reverie.
Her ladyship sniggered and placed a supportive hand behind the man’s back to prevent him from reeling backwards and injuring himself. “There’s an old song that goes, ‘a penny for your thoughts; a nickel for your kiss; a dime if you tell me that you love me’.”
“This place is weird,” commented Sho, waving a silent invitation for the ladies to join him. Threading his fingers together and resting his elbows at his knees, he leaned forward and continued, “That professor’s weird. All these plants are weird.”
“Really? How so?” enquired her ladyship pleasantly as she plucked a leaf of petroselinum crispu and chewed thoughtfully on it.
“Can you do that?” Sho asked, gaping at her as she offered a leaf to Miss Unare who shook her head.
Haineko gave him an incredulous glare whilst informing him: “This is parsley. Looks like poison hemlock but isn’t. It attracts wasps and other predatory insects.”
“Festivity, banquet, feast, entertainment, lasting pleasures,” said her ladyship as she leaned on her cane casually with all the manner of an old fashioned gentleman out on a promenade. “That’s what the petroselinum crispu means in case you’re wondering.”
“Oh,” was the only noise to escape from Sho as he watched the two ladies admire the foliage. It took another few seconds for him to recall that he needed his therapist to clarify a few other things for him. There was the presence of her friend to consider. But while Sho’s scruples wondered on the suitability of another person attending his therapy sessions, he decided that it was possibly a Hades Health Centre rule to allow some sessions to be audited. As soon he assured himself that it was all right to have two devils breathing down his neck, he collected his thoughts to ask: “What about the other plants?”
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Seemingly as though she had not heard him, Miss Unare addressed Lady Strange, “We came at the wrong time. The morning glories have closed their buds already.”
“A shame the ipomoea tricolour should not be in bloom for us,” affirmed her ladyship as she beckoned for Sho. “Come walk with us, Mr Sakurai. It is a shame to admire these specimens on our own.”
“What does that morning glory mean, milady?” he asked, as soon as he drew abreast with the ladies.
“Two meanings - affectation and coquetry. Amazing things, you know,” continued Lady Strange, “the seeds have been known to produce hallucinogenic effects when consumed. A question you might to ask yourself - who is the coquette trying to get at you via affectation?”
“Is that a flirt trying to get at me by playing coy?” he asked, eyeing her curiously as she pushed at her glasses.
“He’s dense today,” sighed Miss Unare, wagging an admonishing finger at him.
Lady Strange rolled her eyes as she muttered sotto voce. “The lot of them are dense today. Imbeciles, all of them, trying my patience.”
“Oh, look! Black nightshade! They’re ripe too,” exclaimed Haineko in apparent delight, plucking some and eating one.
Taking the proffered cluster of berries and slowly masticating it, Lady Strange popped one into Sho’s mouth. “Perfectly safe when it’s ripe. Don’t gawk so.”
Sho swallowed hard and choked, wondering what sort of devilry they were up to. “But it has nightshade in its name,” he blustered, shrinking in fear from the plants.
“I swear, everyone gets worked up over the minutest of details around her.” Her ladyship rolled her eyes and took Sho’s arm so that both she and Miss Unare could lean on either side of the man.
“Very bad manners,” chided Haineko in agreement before explaining, “the berries of the Solanum nigrum or Black nightshade are safe to eat when they’re ripe. Even the tender young leaves are edible when cooked. It’s when the berries are green that they’re poisonous.”
“In my day in the Ancient World, we used it for medical purposes in treating liver ailments.,” contributed her ladyship. “It is not to be confused with the Deadly Nightshade which is my favourite. The Black nightshade in the language of flowers means dark thoughts and bitter truth.”
“Whose dark thoughts?” Sho immediately asked.
“Who knows?” goaded Miss Unare with a cheeky sideways glance as she nudged his ribs. “What bitter truth does it mean, eh?”
“No doubt something that he has yet to face, is unwilling to face, yet to realise, or remained completely oblivious to. Which is it, Mr Sakurai? Care to enlighten us?” her ladyship smiled, clinging to his elbow and looking at him archly.
“I don’t know anymore. There are so many things in my head these days,” lamented the newscaster-rapper in doleful tones.
“There, there.” Haineko patted his upper arm comfortingly. “If all else fails, you could always seek recourse in the mandragora officinarum or the atropa belladonna. The latter may find favour with your therapist. It’s her pet name.”
“Only Mephisto calls me Belladonna, I’d have you know,” stated her ladyship, pulling Sho forward when he recoiled from them. “Atropa belladonna is the Deadly Nightshade. Other names for it are ‘devil’s cherries’, ‘naughty man’s cherries’ and ‘devil’s herb’. In herbal remedies, belladonna was used as a sedative. Europeans in the dark ages (especially the priests and priestesses) used to take belladonna to produce prophetic powers or to contact the spirit world. The name, Deadly Nightshade, is drawn from knowledge of its narcotic and ultimately poisonous properties. The Latin name amuses me though.”
“How so?” Sho enquired, doubting his own prudence in posing that query.
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“Atropa comes from the name of one of the Fates, Atropos. She’s the one that cuts the thread of life when it’s all over. The meaning is clear, hein? Eat any part of the plant and your thread of life will be cut,” her ladyship laughed chillingly. “Bella donna is Italian for beautiful lady. Combine Atropa with bella donna and you get the meaning, ‘do not betray a beautiful lady’. An apt warning for you, n’est-ce pas?”
“What do you mean by that?” Sho sputtered, rubbing his brow nervously at this slew of revelation.
Haineko laughed on hearing this and taunted him with a nudge to the ribs and a jibe: “Sly dog, have you a beautiful lady secreted somewhere? Are you going to be a faithless deceiver and betray her?”
“Do that and it will be the end of you,” added Lady Strange, lightly touching one of the berries with a caressing finger. “Atropa belladonna is commonly just called Belladonna. And belladonna in the language of flowers means ‘hush’ and ‘silence’. Betray your beauty and it will be permanent silence for you in death, hein.”
“Interestingly enough, we used to apply tiny drops of belladonna juice to our eyes in the Italian renaissance so as to enlarge the pupils, believing that this gave us greater brilliance in our eyes,” elaborated Miss Unare. “Eat a leaf and die; nibble on a root and die; eat ten berries and die.”
“But while the berries are sweet, death is slow that way. I prefer hemlock. I used to keep a vial with me when I was a mortal,” said her ladyship somewhat wistfully before she shook her head and truncated the reverie into the past.
Shuddering and looking askance at both ladies without daring to fling off their arms so that he could make a run for it (as devils always caught one whether one liked it or not), Sho asked, “What about the other plant - the Mandragora officinarum?”
“The mandrake,” Miss Unare chuckled faintly, “it means horror, honour, and rarity. The roots are not to be consumed because it causes madness, delirium and ultimately death. In the Middle Ages, it was ingested as a treatment for melancholy, convulsions and mania because it’s an emetic. It was believed that consuming it makes you vomit your ‘ill humour’ and thus become better. When applied externally, juice of the finely grated root numbed the senses and relieved rheumatic pains, ulcers and scrofulous tumours.”
Lady Strange nodded sagely at this and steered their party towards the greenhouse. “There are three main superstitions linked to it. First, it was believed that when the root is dug up it screams and kills all who hear it. Second, it was once believed that if a person pulls up this root he will be condemned to hell. Third, it was believed to have sprung from the semen of a hanged man. Fascinating, n’est-ce pas?”
At the chilling manner in which she gave her account, Sho shrank back and belatedly wondered whether going to the Health Centre for treatment was the wise thing. Deciding that it was too late for regrets and sticking to his therapist was the best he could do now if he was to make cogent sense of all the pieces of information in his head, he asked, “What is that - Bulbophyllum?”
“An amalgamation of the Latin word bulbus for ‘bulb-like’ and the Greek phyllon for ‘leaf’. The Bulbophyllum is a very vulnerable and endangered species. Orchids, all orchids in the language of flowers refer to a beauty or a belle. In this case, it will be an outward beauty but one who is inwardly rotting. Who is it, do you know?” her ladyship’s voice lilted playfully.
“Not one of us, I hope,” mock huffed Miss Unare. “We’re very open about our perversions and devilry.”
“Of course not, ladies. You are both delightful,” Sho murmured, erring on the side of caution lest he had not one but two devils flying after him and demanding his blood.
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“How sweet,” mock cooed her ladyship, leaning heavily on his arm. “Keep this up and you’ll turn my head.”
“What about your other fellow and Mephisto?” teased Haineko with a knowingly gleam in her eyes.
Shifting up her glasses as their party ambled to the interior of the annex, her ladyship flicked her gentleman’s walking cane in a dismissive gesture. “Mephisto flirts with everyone. And that other fellow spurned my advances, would you believe it,” she indignantly revealed.
“Shocking,” gasped Miss Unare, “wouldn’t Mr Sakurai agree?”
“Er… Perhaps like Miss Unare, Milady is an acquired taste?” he hedged on the side of diplomacy. However, he had enough on this diversion of topic and strove to bring the conversation back to matter at hand. “There was this song playing in Dr Étrange’s office when I saw her. It was about a masquerade.”
“The Carpenters’ song or the song from the Phantom of the Opera?” ventured her ladyship facetiously.
“The latter,” Sho revealed grimly.
“Oh, Sybilla,” cut in Haineko at that moment, “I have tickets to the West End version of that next week. Fancy a night out?”
“It would do us some good to have a jaunt about London,” opined her ladyship approvingly.
Sho groaned and ran a hand distractedly through his hair. “Why was she listening to masquerade?”
“It was either that or ‘The Riddle’ from the Scarlet Pimpernel.” Miss Unare shrugged non-committally. “The lyrics are meant to be symbolic.”
“Symbolic that we’re living in society where everyone’s wearing masks around each other?” Sho asked uncertainly, looking from his right to his life where both ladies were still hanging on his arms.
“Par ma foi! You grew a brain cell, enfin!” praised her ladyship, kissing his cheek in a sisterly fashion. “Think along those lines of whatever is going on around you and you’ll be on the right track.”
“He is improving,” remarked Miss Unare, patting the man’s elbow. “I see your effort isn’t wasted.”
“Not all of it at least,” her ladyship amended.
“I wanted to ask, milady,” Sho went on before the ladies could distract him with more banter. “I saw a file on Dr Étrange’s office with Fujiki Iris’s name on it. It said the advisor was one Tsuchimoto Aides.”
“Aides?” echoed Miss Unare, glancing at her friend significantly.
“Not one of mine,” replied her ladyship, pushing at her glasses and pursing her lips into a stern thin line. “Aides is the Greek name for Hades, the God of the Underworld. That means…”
“It’s one of Harry’s?” Miss Unare sounded incredulous as she darted another look at her friend.
“Could be,” said her ladyship consideringly, folding her arms thereby putting the topic to a clipped but firm end. “Did you notice anything else, Mr Sakurai?”
“There were black roses on the teacups,” he volunteered eagerly so as to break down the tension that seemed to emerge from the mere mention of Aides.
“Black roses don’t exist in nature. They’re really just a very, very dark shade of red,” pointed out Miss Unare with an impatient look. “Traditionally, it is used to connote death or hatred.”
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Sho nodded in perceived understanding to this preference. “Whose long, ponderous journey, milady? How does one overcome it?”
“Through fortitude in adversity,” counselled the Mistress of the Eighth-and-a-half circle of hell coolly. “How you go about obtaining fortitude and finding it within yourself is your business.”
“That’s no answer at all,” complained the celebrity newscaster.
Reaching over and knocking his head with her cane, she reminded him, “Think about it. What good is your expensive Keio education if your grey matter is atrophying?”
“What about blood oranges? What meaning do they have?” Sho went on, rubbing his head and feeling a small bump there. “Dr Étrange gave me these chocolate bonbons with blood orange in the middle. And she said something about the bitter rind being mixed into the filling…”
“She has excellent taste,” complimented Miss Unare. “I must get some of those chocolates. What about you, Sybilla?”
“Probably I’ll try the orange marmalade. I have a weakness for Seville blood orange marmalade,” confessed her ladyship in her bantering tone. “Oranges as a fruit and as a tree convey the meaning of generosity. That the chocolate is small and outwardly unremarkable should be telling to you, Mr Sakurai.”
“How so?”
“Voyez, what do you see?” elucidated her ladyship as she tapped the wall with her cane and produced a larger scale model of the bonbon.
“Looks like an ordinary chocolate,” Sho said.
“His one brain cell has died,” sniggered Miss Unare in a less-than-subtle manner.
“Because he always jumps to the wrong conclusion without hearing the whole account, damn presumptuous bugger.” Swishing her cane in the air so that the bonbon was cut in her half, her ladyship asked once more in a tone of barely concealed irritability, “What do you see now?”
“The middle is pale ruby red with flecks of darker red in them,” Sho said, growing increasingly befuddled by this line of questioning.
“Beneath the surface, Mr Sakurai. Think!” her ladyship hissed, knocking the top of his head with her cane. “On the surface, Friend Chocolate looks like an ordinary chocolate. She is brown, drab and looks like a lamb pellet and thoroughly unremarkable. But cut her open and voila - she is full of blood orange sweetness. Look beneath the surface and you will find something meaningful, hein. Mais, this sweetness is tinged with bitterness, as evinced by the rind. Truth is always bittersweet and a hard thing to swallow, Mr Sakurai. Vous comprenez? Alors, the question is what you with that truth. Will you savour it with all its different flavours or will you spit it out? More importantly, will you look past the unremarkable exterior and look for the bitter truth inside? Do you even want to?”
“What is this truth I’m supposed to be looking for, milady?” queried he urgently.
“There are many truths, not just one - how you find them is entirely up to your own initiative. Stop freezing yourself in the present. Look ahead at the future and see what lies ahead in your different scenarios and reflect,” advised her ladyship. She would have elaborated had her Devil’s Digital Assistant or DDA not vibrated with a message.
“Brontes?” asked Miss Unare, peering over her friend’s shoulder.
“The footman,” her ladyship replied. “Apparently, some idiot brat playing volleyball wants to harass my geldings.”
“Milady, you were saying?” Sho encouraged, hoping that she would continue.
“Not today,” she cut him short. “I have to head back. Think about everything we’ve said so far and I’ll see you when I do.”
That was all Sho managed to squeeze out of her ladyship and Miss Unare, for they both disappeared soon after - whither he knew not.
[More therapy sessions and analysis to follow. Give me time. Give me time.]
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Sho's section was such a joy to write, though it did take me quite some time to gather up all the information, string together all the things I had gathered and weave something 'subtly' into the background of my main plot. So subtle to the average reader, but those things had neon signs screaming 'ANALYZE ME' much like dear Alice and her 'EAT ME' and 'DRINK ME' nourishment. All goodies for her ladyship!
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The imagery and symbolism in Sho’s section (which I’ve covered in more detail in the post mortem sections) are rich with meaning for anyone with an eye to the plot. I raised a brow (for your benefit) at the wisteria reference -the same plant outside La Glycine. Ha! I had no idea you were going to throw it in there. It was a pleasant surprise, I own. And for that and this section, I thank you.
Of course, we wonder whether Sho actually notices anything he sees and makes sense of anything. The man probably hasn’t even noticed that the name of his ‘betrothed’ (aka Iris) keeps cropping up with the frequency and regularity of waves along the shore. I even doubt he’s noticed that the wisteria card was paper-clipped to Iris’s request for restricted material, or that Iris’s supervisor has the Greek version of Hades for a name. Shouldn’t that send warning bells to his brain? What kind of person has the god of the underworld for a dissertation advisor? Those thoughts have probably not occurred him. But that is to be expected - that man does only have one brain cell. To think that we were so pleasant and civil to him too, the least he can do to repay us is to remove his blinkers and grow a few more brain cells. *harrumphs at M. Sakurai*
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Of course Sho has not noticed a thing. He's too focused on himself (like everyone in Itsumademo) and how there are all these puzzling things happening all of a sudden to him. The boy went years without knowing the real Masaki. If he doesn't even know what lies beneath his beloved Masaki in a tin can, how can he notice the goddess of the rainbow looming in the shadows?
With Dr. Etrange's entrance, comes more mystery. Of course Iris would have to have a connection with Dr. Etrange and her colleague, Tsuchimoto Aides(u), would have to be Iris' faculty advisor. More connections, more wheels within wheels....XDDD
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I am still thinking of the connexion between the Goddess of the Rainbow vis-a-vis the God of the Underworld and Nemesis/Tyche/Beatrice. I choked on my tea when I saw Aides the name. "Surely not," my brain went, and then when I realised that the whole set up with Dr Etrange happens in "hell" it makes some tenuous sense. She's a creature of the shadows, so she should know Aides/Hades.
[Of course, now Lady Strange wonders whether Lord Hal has a finger in her pie with her boys and she is not pleased.]
And of course, Dr Etrange would stare down at Sho from her spectacles, rap his knuckles with a letter opener and tell him that this is hell and he's not out of it. Oh, all these connexions. At this rate, you'd have a 30+ chapter work at the very least. Very amusing. The twists and turns of this plot makes my week ever so less humdrum. For that, you have my affection and thanks.
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Iris, Aides, Nemesis &ca... I love that the wheels and cogs be turning round and round.... Aides was strictly for you, my dear. And I just had to put another reference to Greek mythology in Ch 14 as well.
30+ chapters? I wouldn't be surprised. But I try not to let it get too long because then people get intimidated by the length... Oh, well, they can just deal. Those who are not willing to think or are intimidated by complex plots, exit stage right via Dr. Etrange's elevator. *sniggers*
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