Deconstructing gender in Tokyo Babylon.
.
I offer an explanation.
Title: Silent
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon
Wordcount: 3900
Rating: Light R, maybe? It's on the thematically mature side, like the canon. Also a little Yuri.
Wait a second, Yuri?: Yeah. This is Tokyo Babylon as if the genders were reversed all along.
What are you on, Mith?: Brown sugar buns.
Summary: In hindsight, Subaru probably should have been more embarrassed about faceplanting into Seishibana’s cleavage.
Silent
tokyo babylon
Mithrigil Galtirglin
impetus c/o Lucent and Puel
In hindsight, Subaru probably should have been more embarrassed about faceplanting into Seishibana’s cleavage. At the time, she’d been more concerned about where her shikigami was going.
“Oh gosh,” the tall woman had said, “are you all right?” And then she somehow disentangled herself from Subaru without trampling on Subaru’s apologies (which were profuse and hasty and accented by dramatic flounces of her culottes and beribboned hat), and calmly escorted Subaru away from the edge of the Metro platform. Subaru probably should have paid less attention to Seishibana’s hands, long and well-kept but with short, flat nails and colorless polish like a man’s. The conversation would come up a few weeks later, actually-Hokuto, not Subaru, would ask why she never painted her nails or let them grow, and Seishibana would answer, because of the latex gloves, because of work, because of how easily long nails can break. But at the time of this meeting, Subaru didn’t ask anything so personal or minute.
Names first, of course. Sakurazuka Seishibana-a strange name, she said so herself-and Sumeragi Subaru, onmyouji and high school first-year. Seishibana confessed to having a little magic as well, enough to know how important Subaru must be.
On the way out of Ikebukuro, they’d talked about other things. Seishibana complimented Subaru’s cute outfit-periwinkle culottes over a modest puckered shirt, a sweet cap and eyelet-cuffed gloves, gartered stockings and chunky shoes that had been at least part of the cause of that fiasco. Subaru explained that her twin brother, Hokuto, was an aspiring fashion designer, and used Subaru to model the girls’ fashions now that he was starting to be less of a trap (and Hokuto was a trap, even called himself one), but Subaru didn’t say that part aloud because she was already blushing so much.
Unlike most people, Seishibana didn’t go on about how special it must be to be a twin-Subaru noticed that, smiled privately.
Subaru turned the conversation over to Seishibana, complimented her outfit as well. There must have been something in the air that day, because Seishibana was also wearing blue, a sleek skirt-suit with pearl-colored ruffles showing underneath, at the slip and at the cuffs and at the shirt-collar, which was done up high. There were rosettes on her shoes, white surged in blue, and two more in the dangling barrettes that kept most, but not all, of her long brown hair from hanging into her glasses. Subaru asked where Seishibana (who she was calling Sakurazuka-sensei at the time) worked that allowed her to wear something so bright and cheerful. Seishibana said she was self-employed, ran a modest veterinary clinic under her flat in Shinjuku-“And in my line of work, where so many people that I deal with are so concerned for the pets they love, shouldn’t I do my best to put on a cheerful face?”
That, well, cemented that Sakurazuka Seishibana would become a part of Subaru’s life. They exchanged cards-Seishibana’s purse had a rhinestone penguin on the zipper-and Seishibana promised she’d call by the end of the week, to see about Subaru coming over and maybe interning, at the clinic. “After all, we working girls have to stick together!” she’d said. And Subaru had been starry-eyed for hours afterward-well, until Hokuto paged her and she realized that it had been hours, just wandering in the park, wondering what flower the sensei’s perfume was supposed to be.
-
The next time they met, everyone was in green. It was about a week later, and Hokuto was so excited that he managed to convince Subaru to wear not just a skirt but skirts, layers of them, even though she’d have to go to work later. (But that’s another story, even though it matters to this one not a little.) Seishibana and Hokuto connected almost instantly-he started calling her Sei-chan and told her up-front that she was probably too old and too curvy for the barrettes in her hair-“Nerd-chic,” he called it, “and it kinda works, but you’ve outgrown megane-ko. Level up to EGA!”
“But EGA's so dark,” Seishibana had said-and stepped away from the dog she was tending to, pulling back on the hem of her lab coat. “What do you think, Subaru-chan-don't I look so much sexier in bright colors?”
And that, well, that cemented for Hokuto that he wasn’t getting anything more than another fashion plate out of this arrangement (but he was pretty cool with that). Subaru, though was blushing and stammering and doing everything with her mouth except actually answering.
“So what you have to do is create your own style, Sei-chan!” Hokuto said. “Play to your colors, sure, but play to your body type too! Those barrettes have to go. Now Subaru-Subaru needs to be in EGL.”
No words.
“I have to admit, Subaru-chan’s going to have that cute build a little while longer, and I’d love to see her in something frilly and sweet-like a little doll, isn't she?”
Subaru had something to say about how she tries not to wear skirts or kimono to work because it’s easier to be modest in pants-but she’d just noticed that for all the green that Seishibana was wearing, her lips were very red. At least as red as Subaru’s cheeks felt, being compared to a little doll.
“-But what I look forward to most of all,” Seishibana went on, “is when Subaru-chan grows up, gets all sleek and sexy herself.”
Whereupon Subaru just about died, to the sound of dogs barking and the ceiling fan spinning and Hokuto going on and on about getting some crinoline and starting a line of EGL dresses, so Subaru could be Sei-chan’s doll while she was still tiny.
-
But even if it was really uncomfortable to just be near her sometimes-Seishibana liked to tease her, and liked to compliment her, and, well, was always very striking-Subaru found herself looking forward to every visit to the clinic. Seishibana was everything Subaru hoped she could be someday-independent, confident, and so smart, and so free, without losing any (well, much) of her femininity. (Was smoking a gendered thing? It was tough, but it was also very sensual, drawing attention to Seishibana’s mouth and the curves of her face.) Subaru wanted to tell her Grandfather about this so much, about how there was someone so outside the rules of society who was still successful, someone who didn’t just escape the strictures of Japanese life but gave back to them, contributed to the city that put her down, just like Subaru wanted to do. She ended up not telling Grandfather much at all though, mostly because she was so busy, but also because Seishibana was a Sakurazuka, and strong, stern Grandfather was even more hung up than Hokuto about the old Sakurazuka clan being the enemy.
(Hokuto just thought the potential for them to be star-crossed lovers was hot. “It adds a little spice to something that’s already sexy,” he’d said.)
Seishibana was definitely not the enemy. She was always there to give Subaru support and advice, not just on school matters and on time management but with work as well. “I have a little magic”? That was an understatement! What she probably lacked in raw power Seishibana made up for in knowledge and insight and experience. Subaru lost count of how many times she woke up in Seishibana’s arms after overexerting herself during an exorcism, and how many times Seishibana’s lucky timing had provided just enough energy to make the shield hold half a minute longer, and how many times she was simply there, to console Subaru and remind her that the world itself was cruel, “but if Tokyo turned out someone as wonderful as you, Subaru-chan, there’s still forgiveness in her, and she still needs you. She’s a working girl just like us.”
And sometimes she touched Subaru. Little appraising touches, the brush of her knuckles across Subaru’s cheek, or her hands over Subaru’s gloves with her fingers splayed between, or a full embrace from behind, perching her chin on top of Subaru’s hat and holding her close, like a blanket or a puppy or a stuffed toy. She never asked, and once or twice it wasn’t okay, but Subaru supposed she was just being overly sensitive. Especially because Subaru couldn’t really touch back. But were the gloves that protected her from the Sakurazukamori assassins really worth never being able to touch back?
-
She dreamed of touching back and woke up feverish, with her hands sweating in those gloves. She thought that was only supposed to happen to boys. But who could she ask, honestly?
-
Subaru met Yuya-chan in Shinjuku General. Yuya was waiting for her father and Subaru was waiting for Hokuto, and Yuya asked if she could touch Subaru’s dress because the fabric looked so shiny and soft. (Subaru was a lot less uncomfortable about wearing dresses these days, even when she had work to do, and Hokuto did her makeup for her just about every morning now.) Yuya looked about six or seven years old and said in a very serious voice that her father didn’t know much about girl’s clothing or wanting to be pretty, and Subaru admitted that she didn’t really either. But they laughed, and Yuya asked how skirts got so fluffy and whether it was uncomfortable to sit in them, and was so studious and cute that Subaru was almost shocked to tears when a nurse came to take Yuya to artificial dialysis.
She learned the full story soon enough, piecing it together from what the doctors would tell her when she came to visit, from glances at Yuya-chan’s father (a gaunt and drawn salaryman in a suit that Hokuto described as last season’s mistake, not that Subaru would know), from Seishibana’s insight into this, into the world of medicine, into everything. Subaru wondered, decided even, that if she was a match she’d gladly give up anything her body could to save someone else.
“That’s just like you, Subaru-chan,” Seishibana had whispered. And she could whisper because she was so close, right then, close enough that the ribbons in her hair were brushing against the sides of Subaru’s neck, close enough that the crinoline under Subaru’s skirts gathered against itself and pressed closer.
When Subaru realized that she was sitting in Seishibana’s lap, in her arms, like the brightly-colored dolls Seishibana collected in her flat, Subaru also realized that it didn’t scare her to be held like this.
“But you’re not something that should be broken apart,” Seishibana said into Subaru’s ear, under the ruffles of her hat, “you’re too beautiful for that. I’ll understand if you want to do something like that to yourself, and I’ll accept your decision. But if you were to die, Subaru-chan, even if you lived on in someone else, I would be very sad. And Hokuto would be very, very angry with you.”
Subaru laughed, and when she did, she reached up and clung to Seishibana’s arms, holding the one that was holding her, through layers of cloth.
-
Subaru also dreamed of being nine years old, in shikifuku for the first time, in Tokyo for the first time, alone in a park for the first time. It was bleakest winter but one sakura was blooming, a frighteningly large tree with violently pink petals, tangling with the snow. Beneath the tree, there was a beautiful young lady in a black winter kimono patterned with cherry blossoms of the purest white, with a thick obi like a sheet of ice, and five-pointed paper stars dangling from her sash and her hair. She asked if the little girl liked the cherry blossoms-Subaru told her yes. She asked if the little girl knew why the cherry blossoms were beautiful-Subaru didn’t know. She explained that the tree fed on the blood of the corpses buried beneath it, that petals as white as snow drank up the blood and turned pink.
And Subaru asked her if the corpses might be in pain.
In the dream, the woman startled, then smiled, and her lips were redder than sakura, red like the fruit and not like the flower. And she knelt before Subaru and drew her close, and began to speak of their someday meeting again-but the wind and the cloth and the petals were louder, and drowned out the lady’s voice.
But Subaru does recall that her hands, in the dream, were bare, and that is the last time she can ever remember them being so, really.
-
“You,” Yuya’s father snarled, looming over Subaru with a knife glistening in his fist. “You, young lady. You’re gonna save my daughter. You’re gonna save my family.”
Yes, Subaru thought. Yes I am. And she sat very still, and braced her heels on the floor and her back against the wall and waited to be carved into.
But then there was a flash of cranberry-red and a clatter of sharp stiletto heels-the disco-light shimmer of ribbons and jewelry going against the hospital’s lights-the sound of cracking glass and tearing flesh-a man groaning, his bone breaking, and…and spattering, darker red smearing across the floor.
Seishibana’s lipstick was the color of her blood. It spilled out of her face, between her fingers, darkened the cuff of her suit and streaked the collar and apron of Subaru’s dress.
Subaru remembers everything but has no idea how to articulate it. It was as if two flocks of birds descended, carrion-fowl to take Yuya’s father one way and Seishibana the other, and Subaru knows she’d scrambled after the doctors and found the operating room door and beat her fists against it, and screamed and screamed until she couldn’t hear herself either.
-
The barrettes turned out to be very useful for keeping Seishibana’s hair out of the bandages’ way. With her hair piled on her head and her glasses off, with no jewelry at all, and wearing men’s silk pyjamas in a warm shade of brown, she looked very different to Subaru, somehow larger and smaller at the same time. The doctors said that she was blind in her right eye, that the left would overexert itself eventually and soon Seishibana, who loved beautiful things, would never be able to see again. But she was still so cheerful, cuddling with a stuffed penguin and smiling peacefully, and Subaru thought she’d run out of tears but collapsed into them anyway, falling to her knees so that her stockings tore, burying her face in Seishibana’s blankets and begging to be forgiven.
Laughter was the last thing she expected to hear-and an apology was next in line. But Seishibana gave her both of these, and held Subaru close and thumbed away her tears and that left ugly black streaks from the mascara but Subaru didn’t care. “I did this because I wanted to,” Seishibana said. “Because I wanted you whole. If anything, I should be apologizing for lying to you. I couldn’t accept your decision at all, in the end.”
When Seishibana told her to stop crying, Subaru tried her best, and it almost worked. And then when she told Subaru that maybe, there was one thing she could do, a sharp frightened thrill raced up Subaru’s legs, right along the cold runs in her hose.
-And then when she asked that Subaru go freshen up and run down to the nearest sweet shop for a few discounted Valentines truffles, and pursed her lips together in anticipation of chocolate, Subaru scurried out obediently, deliriously happy, and didn’t even apologize when she almost trampled Hokuto just outside the door.
-
“What does Sumeragi Subaru think of Sakurazuka Seishibana?” Hokuto had asked her, so somber and clear and precise that it was startling.
Subaru didn’t answer, because she honestly didn’t know. She still doesn’t.
Hokuto wrapped his arms around her, careful not to crush the tulle on her sleeves, and seemed like he was forcing a smile. “I keep getting this feeling that she’s going to take you away from me. Sometimes I think it’s a real premonition, the rest of the time I wonder if it’s just because we’re growing up and growing different, and I’m scared. But whatever it is, Subaru, she’s changed you. You’ve changed, and she’s why, and you need to think about whether that’s what you want and…and I don’t know,” he sighed, and Subaru realized that Hokuto was taller than her now, taller enough than her that he could put his forehead on hers without mussing her bangs. “So…so you should think about her,” he said, and there was such finality to it that Subaru opened her eyes, sharply, and stepped back, tangling in the long train of her skirt. “You should think about what you want, and whether it’s her.”
-
On a park bench, over a can of the best coffee in the nearest vending machine, a blind woman smiled warmly and told Subaru that she must be in love, because the sound and the smell of a woman in love are unmistakable to anyone who’s sensed them once before.
An hour later, Subaru’s mascara began to run again, and stained her gloves when she tried to wipe the tears away.
-
In hindsight, Subaru is surprised that she stayed conscious for so long, during…during what had happened. Then again, she supposes that she hadn’t really been conscious for her entire year as Seishibana’s doll. It was only fitting for her to be awake and aware and captive when Seishibana decided she’d had enough, and broke her.
Subaru remembers everything, of course. She replays it in her dreams, detailed so acutely as the presence of one barrette, not two, only there to bare the bandaged side of Seishibana’s face, and that one barrette being the only color on her now, the same dark red as her mouth. Subaru had stared, had recalled an old question, don’t I look so much sexier in bright colors?, and the answer turned out to be both yes and no, turned out to be that the Seishibana Subaru knew was a doll herself too, and the doll wore bright colors and was-was sexy in them. But the player wore black and white.
And it was as everyone had feared and told Subaru in the first place, that Seishibana was the Sakurazukamori, and Subaru realized that the kanji for death was just like a flower with ‘night’ instead of ‘person’ and one fewer barrette in her hair.
The cherry tree had wound out of the earth like an eruption, had tangled around Subaru and tattered her crinolines and gloves and sucked her in. Seishibana stalked over and touched her then, petted her cheeks and ran her fingers under the rips in Subaru’s dress and told Subaru everything-that Ikebukuro had not been their first meeting, that all her love and attention for Subaru was part of a pact they made beneath this very tree, when Subaru was nine. That she had decided, on that day, to see if she was capable of treating people like more than just toys, capable of valuing not just beauty but life. That Subaru’s purity had been something different, something new, something she thought might amuse her and arouse her. And it had, she admitted-but no more than did any others of her dolls.
She pried the gloves from Subaru’s hands and the magic wound out of them, shred them. Subaru’s hands were marked with pentagrams, the symbol of the Sakurazukamori, the murderers-murderer, singular, Seishibana explained, “because I am a clan of one.” And she kissed those marks, ran her tongue and her lipstick over them, traced them and made them glow and burn, and Subaru wanted to die-just like she did whenever Seishibana told her she was cute, only a thousand times worse.
The smell of the first day, of Seishibana’s perfume-turned out to be sakura and cigarettes.
“You’ve been a very interesting toy,” Seishibana told Subaru, holding her close and pressing her into the trunk of the tree with her body. “But perhaps I’ve simply outgrown you, and it’s time to put you away.” She drank up Subaru’s black eyeliner-tears, left round red kisses in their place. “Maybe someday I’ll find a doll who can play with me back.”
Then the tree ate her legs, and Seishibana pulled Subaru’s shoulder out of its socket, like maybe she could replace it.
That’s all Subaru had been awake for.
-
She remembers Within, remembers the crippling euphoria that came with having no feelings, no reactions to anything at all. On her darkest days she wants to go back, wants the reprieve from sensation and emotion that being in a coma gave her. Hokuto came to her there, and he was wearing shikifuku-Hokuto hated shikifuku-and he held Subaru and told her he was going to bring her back. And Subaru didn’t tell him to stop.
Sometimes she doesn’t think she should have.
The image-Seishibana’s nails, painted red in Hokuto’s blood-was burned into Subaru’s mind the moment she saw it, and hasn’t left. Usually the eyes of a doll close when you lay it on its back. Subaru’s always open.
And then, when she woke, the world itself was broken. Hokuto was dead; Grandfather, paralyzed, confined to a wheelchair. The clinic was closed, the flat above it vacant; it hadn’t been a dream, but it left her like one when she stopped sleeping.
Subaru’s hair grew longer, and she kept it that way, made a vow to never cut it until Seishibana was dead. Every morning and every night, she’d brush it for half an hour at least. She quit school and managed her time with cigarettes instead, scheduling her day around the snap of lighters. She kept makeup around only for ceremonies and spells, but had never learned to apply it herself, so the mascara expired and the eyeshadows chunked and crumbled. She didn’t just keep her nails short, she pried them off with her teeth until her fingers bled. The clothes Hokuto had left her were too big in some ways and too small in others, so she burned them, and took to dressing simply-plain jeans and sweaters that were neither tight nor loose, only in black and grey, with a white trenchcoat if it was cold and flat boots no matter the weather. But never gloves again, and never hats again, and never stockings or ruffles or tulle.
Throughout her first year awake she fought with Grandfather about this, about the dishonor she was doing the clan by not presenting herself as a woman-but Subaru pointed out that she’d stopped menstruating when she’d gone Within, and her cycle hadn’t recovered, so the point was moot. It was possible that she couldn’t bear children-it was possible that her body just didn’t want to. Grandfather had to drop the issue eventually.
---
-
There may be an X/1999 continuation of this. Thoughts of it dance in my head.
.
I offer an explanation.
Title: Silent
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon
Wordcount: 3900
Rating: Light R, maybe? It's on the thematically mature side, like the canon. Also a little Yuri.
Wait a second, Yuri?: Yeah. This is Tokyo Babylon as if the genders were reversed all along.
What are you on, Mith?: Brown sugar buns.
Summary: In hindsight, Subaru probably should have been more embarrassed about faceplanting into Seishibana’s cleavage.
Silent
tokyo babylon
Mithrigil Galtirglin
impetus c/o Lucent and Puel
In hindsight, Subaru probably should have been more embarrassed about faceplanting into Seishibana’s cleavage. At the time, she’d been more concerned about where her shikigami was going.
“Oh gosh,” the tall woman had said, “are you all right?” And then she somehow disentangled herself from Subaru without trampling on Subaru’s apologies (which were profuse and hasty and accented by dramatic flounces of her culottes and beribboned hat), and calmly escorted Subaru away from the edge of the Metro platform. Subaru probably should have paid less attention to Seishibana’s hands, long and well-kept but with short, flat nails and colorless polish like a man’s. The conversation would come up a few weeks later, actually-Hokuto, not Subaru, would ask why she never painted her nails or let them grow, and Seishibana would answer, because of the latex gloves, because of work, because of how easily long nails can break. But at the time of this meeting, Subaru didn’t ask anything so personal or minute.
Names first, of course. Sakurazuka Seishibana-a strange name, she said so herself-and Sumeragi Subaru, onmyouji and high school first-year. Seishibana confessed to having a little magic as well, enough to know how important Subaru must be.
On the way out of Ikebukuro, they’d talked about other things. Seishibana complimented Subaru’s cute outfit-periwinkle culottes over a modest puckered shirt, a sweet cap and eyelet-cuffed gloves, gartered stockings and chunky shoes that had been at least part of the cause of that fiasco. Subaru explained that her twin brother, Hokuto, was an aspiring fashion designer, and used Subaru to model the girls’ fashions now that he was starting to be less of a trap (and Hokuto was a trap, even called himself one), but Subaru didn’t say that part aloud because she was already blushing so much.
Unlike most people, Seishibana didn’t go on about how special it must be to be a twin-Subaru noticed that, smiled privately.
Subaru turned the conversation over to Seishibana, complimented her outfit as well. There must have been something in the air that day, because Seishibana was also wearing blue, a sleek skirt-suit with pearl-colored ruffles showing underneath, at the slip and at the cuffs and at the shirt-collar, which was done up high. There were rosettes on her shoes, white surged in blue, and two more in the dangling barrettes that kept most, but not all, of her long brown hair from hanging into her glasses. Subaru asked where Seishibana (who she was calling Sakurazuka-sensei at the time) worked that allowed her to wear something so bright and cheerful. Seishibana said she was self-employed, ran a modest veterinary clinic under her flat in Shinjuku-“And in my line of work, where so many people that I deal with are so concerned for the pets they love, shouldn’t I do my best to put on a cheerful face?”
That, well, cemented that Sakurazuka Seishibana would become a part of Subaru’s life. They exchanged cards-Seishibana’s purse had a rhinestone penguin on the zipper-and Seishibana promised she’d call by the end of the week, to see about Subaru coming over and maybe interning, at the clinic. “After all, we working girls have to stick together!” she’d said. And Subaru had been starry-eyed for hours afterward-well, until Hokuto paged her and she realized that it had been hours, just wandering in the park, wondering what flower the sensei’s perfume was supposed to be.
-
The next time they met, everyone was in green. It was about a week later, and Hokuto was so excited that he managed to convince Subaru to wear not just a skirt but skirts, layers of them, even though she’d have to go to work later. (But that’s another story, even though it matters to this one not a little.) Seishibana and Hokuto connected almost instantly-he started calling her Sei-chan and told her up-front that she was probably too old and too curvy for the barrettes in her hair-“Nerd-chic,” he called it, “and it kinda works, but you’ve outgrown megane-ko. Level up to EGA!”
“But EGA's so dark,” Seishibana had said-and stepped away from the dog she was tending to, pulling back on the hem of her lab coat. “What do you think, Subaru-chan-don't I look so much sexier in bright colors?”
And that, well, that cemented for Hokuto that he wasn’t getting anything more than another fashion plate out of this arrangement (but he was pretty cool with that). Subaru, though was blushing and stammering and doing everything with her mouth except actually answering.
“So what you have to do is create your own style, Sei-chan!” Hokuto said. “Play to your colors, sure, but play to your body type too! Those barrettes have to go. Now Subaru-Subaru needs to be in EGL.”
No words.
“I have to admit, Subaru-chan’s going to have that cute build a little while longer, and I’d love to see her in something frilly and sweet-like a little doll, isn't she?”
Subaru had something to say about how she tries not to wear skirts or kimono to work because it’s easier to be modest in pants-but she’d just noticed that for all the green that Seishibana was wearing, her lips were very red. At least as red as Subaru’s cheeks felt, being compared to a little doll.
“-But what I look forward to most of all,” Seishibana went on, “is when Subaru-chan grows up, gets all sleek and sexy herself.”
Whereupon Subaru just about died, to the sound of dogs barking and the ceiling fan spinning and Hokuto going on and on about getting some crinoline and starting a line of EGL dresses, so Subaru could be Sei-chan’s doll while she was still tiny.
-
But even if it was really uncomfortable to just be near her sometimes-Seishibana liked to tease her, and liked to compliment her, and, well, was always very striking-Subaru found herself looking forward to every visit to the clinic. Seishibana was everything Subaru hoped she could be someday-independent, confident, and so smart, and so free, without losing any (well, much) of her femininity. (Was smoking a gendered thing? It was tough, but it was also very sensual, drawing attention to Seishibana’s mouth and the curves of her face.) Subaru wanted to tell her Grandfather about this so much, about how there was someone so outside the rules of society who was still successful, someone who didn’t just escape the strictures of Japanese life but gave back to them, contributed to the city that put her down, just like Subaru wanted to do. She ended up not telling Grandfather much at all though, mostly because she was so busy, but also because Seishibana was a Sakurazuka, and strong, stern Grandfather was even more hung up than Hokuto about the old Sakurazuka clan being the enemy.
(Hokuto just thought the potential for them to be star-crossed lovers was hot. “It adds a little spice to something that’s already sexy,” he’d said.)
Seishibana was definitely not the enemy. She was always there to give Subaru support and advice, not just on school matters and on time management but with work as well. “I have a little magic”? That was an understatement! What she probably lacked in raw power Seishibana made up for in knowledge and insight and experience. Subaru lost count of how many times she woke up in Seishibana’s arms after overexerting herself during an exorcism, and how many times Seishibana’s lucky timing had provided just enough energy to make the shield hold half a minute longer, and how many times she was simply there, to console Subaru and remind her that the world itself was cruel, “but if Tokyo turned out someone as wonderful as you, Subaru-chan, there’s still forgiveness in her, and she still needs you. She’s a working girl just like us.”
And sometimes she touched Subaru. Little appraising touches, the brush of her knuckles across Subaru’s cheek, or her hands over Subaru’s gloves with her fingers splayed between, or a full embrace from behind, perching her chin on top of Subaru’s hat and holding her close, like a blanket or a puppy or a stuffed toy. She never asked, and once or twice it wasn’t okay, but Subaru supposed she was just being overly sensitive. Especially because Subaru couldn’t really touch back. But were the gloves that protected her from the Sakurazukamori assassins really worth never being able to touch back?
-
She dreamed of touching back and woke up feverish, with her hands sweating in those gloves. She thought that was only supposed to happen to boys. But who could she ask, honestly?
-
Subaru met Yuya-chan in Shinjuku General. Yuya was waiting for her father and Subaru was waiting for Hokuto, and Yuya asked if she could touch Subaru’s dress because the fabric looked so shiny and soft. (Subaru was a lot less uncomfortable about wearing dresses these days, even when she had work to do, and Hokuto did her makeup for her just about every morning now.) Yuya looked about six or seven years old and said in a very serious voice that her father didn’t know much about girl’s clothing or wanting to be pretty, and Subaru admitted that she didn’t really either. But they laughed, and Yuya asked how skirts got so fluffy and whether it was uncomfortable to sit in them, and was so studious and cute that Subaru was almost shocked to tears when a nurse came to take Yuya to artificial dialysis.
She learned the full story soon enough, piecing it together from what the doctors would tell her when she came to visit, from glances at Yuya-chan’s father (a gaunt and drawn salaryman in a suit that Hokuto described as last season’s mistake, not that Subaru would know), from Seishibana’s insight into this, into the world of medicine, into everything. Subaru wondered, decided even, that if she was a match she’d gladly give up anything her body could to save someone else.
“That’s just like you, Subaru-chan,” Seishibana had whispered. And she could whisper because she was so close, right then, close enough that the ribbons in her hair were brushing against the sides of Subaru’s neck, close enough that the crinoline under Subaru’s skirts gathered against itself and pressed closer.
When Subaru realized that she was sitting in Seishibana’s lap, in her arms, like the brightly-colored dolls Seishibana collected in her flat, Subaru also realized that it didn’t scare her to be held like this.
“But you’re not something that should be broken apart,” Seishibana said into Subaru’s ear, under the ruffles of her hat, “you’re too beautiful for that. I’ll understand if you want to do something like that to yourself, and I’ll accept your decision. But if you were to die, Subaru-chan, even if you lived on in someone else, I would be very sad. And Hokuto would be very, very angry with you.”
Subaru laughed, and when she did, she reached up and clung to Seishibana’s arms, holding the one that was holding her, through layers of cloth.
-
Subaru also dreamed of being nine years old, in shikifuku for the first time, in Tokyo for the first time, alone in a park for the first time. It was bleakest winter but one sakura was blooming, a frighteningly large tree with violently pink petals, tangling with the snow. Beneath the tree, there was a beautiful young lady in a black winter kimono patterned with cherry blossoms of the purest white, with a thick obi like a sheet of ice, and five-pointed paper stars dangling from her sash and her hair. She asked if the little girl liked the cherry blossoms-Subaru told her yes. She asked if the little girl knew why the cherry blossoms were beautiful-Subaru didn’t know. She explained that the tree fed on the blood of the corpses buried beneath it, that petals as white as snow drank up the blood and turned pink.
And Subaru asked her if the corpses might be in pain.
In the dream, the woman startled, then smiled, and her lips were redder than sakura, red like the fruit and not like the flower. And she knelt before Subaru and drew her close, and began to speak of their someday meeting again-but the wind and the cloth and the petals were louder, and drowned out the lady’s voice.
But Subaru does recall that her hands, in the dream, were bare, and that is the last time she can ever remember them being so, really.
-
“You,” Yuya’s father snarled, looming over Subaru with a knife glistening in his fist. “You, young lady. You’re gonna save my daughter. You’re gonna save my family.”
Yes, Subaru thought. Yes I am. And she sat very still, and braced her heels on the floor and her back against the wall and waited to be carved into.
But then there was a flash of cranberry-red and a clatter of sharp stiletto heels-the disco-light shimmer of ribbons and jewelry going against the hospital’s lights-the sound of cracking glass and tearing flesh-a man groaning, his bone breaking, and…and spattering, darker red smearing across the floor.
Seishibana’s lipstick was the color of her blood. It spilled out of her face, between her fingers, darkened the cuff of her suit and streaked the collar and apron of Subaru’s dress.
Subaru remembers everything but has no idea how to articulate it. It was as if two flocks of birds descended, carrion-fowl to take Yuya’s father one way and Seishibana the other, and Subaru knows she’d scrambled after the doctors and found the operating room door and beat her fists against it, and screamed and screamed until she couldn’t hear herself either.
-
The barrettes turned out to be very useful for keeping Seishibana’s hair out of the bandages’ way. With her hair piled on her head and her glasses off, with no jewelry at all, and wearing men’s silk pyjamas in a warm shade of brown, she looked very different to Subaru, somehow larger and smaller at the same time. The doctors said that she was blind in her right eye, that the left would overexert itself eventually and soon Seishibana, who loved beautiful things, would never be able to see again. But she was still so cheerful, cuddling with a stuffed penguin and smiling peacefully, and Subaru thought she’d run out of tears but collapsed into them anyway, falling to her knees so that her stockings tore, burying her face in Seishibana’s blankets and begging to be forgiven.
Laughter was the last thing she expected to hear-and an apology was next in line. But Seishibana gave her both of these, and held Subaru close and thumbed away her tears and that left ugly black streaks from the mascara but Subaru didn’t care. “I did this because I wanted to,” Seishibana said. “Because I wanted you whole. If anything, I should be apologizing for lying to you. I couldn’t accept your decision at all, in the end.”
When Seishibana told her to stop crying, Subaru tried her best, and it almost worked. And then when she told Subaru that maybe, there was one thing she could do, a sharp frightened thrill raced up Subaru’s legs, right along the cold runs in her hose.
-And then when she asked that Subaru go freshen up and run down to the nearest sweet shop for a few discounted Valentines truffles, and pursed her lips together in anticipation of chocolate, Subaru scurried out obediently, deliriously happy, and didn’t even apologize when she almost trampled Hokuto just outside the door.
-
“What does Sumeragi Subaru think of Sakurazuka Seishibana?” Hokuto had asked her, so somber and clear and precise that it was startling.
Subaru didn’t answer, because she honestly didn’t know. She still doesn’t.
Hokuto wrapped his arms around her, careful not to crush the tulle on her sleeves, and seemed like he was forcing a smile. “I keep getting this feeling that she’s going to take you away from me. Sometimes I think it’s a real premonition, the rest of the time I wonder if it’s just because we’re growing up and growing different, and I’m scared. But whatever it is, Subaru, she’s changed you. You’ve changed, and she’s why, and you need to think about whether that’s what you want and…and I don’t know,” he sighed, and Subaru realized that Hokuto was taller than her now, taller enough than her that he could put his forehead on hers without mussing her bangs. “So…so you should think about her,” he said, and there was such finality to it that Subaru opened her eyes, sharply, and stepped back, tangling in the long train of her skirt. “You should think about what you want, and whether it’s her.”
-
On a park bench, over a can of the best coffee in the nearest vending machine, a blind woman smiled warmly and told Subaru that she must be in love, because the sound and the smell of a woman in love are unmistakable to anyone who’s sensed them once before.
An hour later, Subaru’s mascara began to run again, and stained her gloves when she tried to wipe the tears away.
-
In hindsight, Subaru is surprised that she stayed conscious for so long, during…during what had happened. Then again, she supposes that she hadn’t really been conscious for her entire year as Seishibana’s doll. It was only fitting for her to be awake and aware and captive when Seishibana decided she’d had enough, and broke her.
Subaru remembers everything, of course. She replays it in her dreams, detailed so acutely as the presence of one barrette, not two, only there to bare the bandaged side of Seishibana’s face, and that one barrette being the only color on her now, the same dark red as her mouth. Subaru had stared, had recalled an old question, don’t I look so much sexier in bright colors?, and the answer turned out to be both yes and no, turned out to be that the Seishibana Subaru knew was a doll herself too, and the doll wore bright colors and was-was sexy in them. But the player wore black and white.
And it was as everyone had feared and told Subaru in the first place, that Seishibana was the Sakurazukamori, and Subaru realized that the kanji for death was just like a flower with ‘night’ instead of ‘person’ and one fewer barrette in her hair.
The cherry tree had wound out of the earth like an eruption, had tangled around Subaru and tattered her crinolines and gloves and sucked her in. Seishibana stalked over and touched her then, petted her cheeks and ran her fingers under the rips in Subaru’s dress and told Subaru everything-that Ikebukuro had not been their first meeting, that all her love and attention for Subaru was part of a pact they made beneath this very tree, when Subaru was nine. That she had decided, on that day, to see if she was capable of treating people like more than just toys, capable of valuing not just beauty but life. That Subaru’s purity had been something different, something new, something she thought might amuse her and arouse her. And it had, she admitted-but no more than did any others of her dolls.
She pried the gloves from Subaru’s hands and the magic wound out of them, shred them. Subaru’s hands were marked with pentagrams, the symbol of the Sakurazukamori, the murderers-murderer, singular, Seishibana explained, “because I am a clan of one.” And she kissed those marks, ran her tongue and her lipstick over them, traced them and made them glow and burn, and Subaru wanted to die-just like she did whenever Seishibana told her she was cute, only a thousand times worse.
The smell of the first day, of Seishibana’s perfume-turned out to be sakura and cigarettes.
“You’ve been a very interesting toy,” Seishibana told Subaru, holding her close and pressing her into the trunk of the tree with her body. “But perhaps I’ve simply outgrown you, and it’s time to put you away.” She drank up Subaru’s black eyeliner-tears, left round red kisses in their place. “Maybe someday I’ll find a doll who can play with me back.”
Then the tree ate her legs, and Seishibana pulled Subaru’s shoulder out of its socket, like maybe she could replace it.
That’s all Subaru had been awake for.
-
She remembers Within, remembers the crippling euphoria that came with having no feelings, no reactions to anything at all. On her darkest days she wants to go back, wants the reprieve from sensation and emotion that being in a coma gave her. Hokuto came to her there, and he was wearing shikifuku-Hokuto hated shikifuku-and he held Subaru and told her he was going to bring her back. And Subaru didn’t tell him to stop.
Sometimes she doesn’t think she should have.
The image-Seishibana’s nails, painted red in Hokuto’s blood-was burned into Subaru’s mind the moment she saw it, and hasn’t left. Usually the eyes of a doll close when you lay it on its back. Subaru’s always open.
And then, when she woke, the world itself was broken. Hokuto was dead; Grandfather, paralyzed, confined to a wheelchair. The clinic was closed, the flat above it vacant; it hadn’t been a dream, but it left her like one when she stopped sleeping.
Subaru’s hair grew longer, and she kept it that way, made a vow to never cut it until Seishibana was dead. Every morning and every night, she’d brush it for half an hour at least. She quit school and managed her time with cigarettes instead, scheduling her day around the snap of lighters. She kept makeup around only for ceremonies and spells, but had never learned to apply it herself, so the mascara expired and the eyeshadows chunked and crumbled. She didn’t just keep her nails short, she pried them off with her teeth until her fingers bled. The clothes Hokuto had left her were too big in some ways and too small in others, so she burned them, and took to dressing simply-plain jeans and sweaters that were neither tight nor loose, only in black and grey, with a white trenchcoat if it was cold and flat boots no matter the weather. But never gloves again, and never hats again, and never stockings or ruffles or tulle.
Throughout her first year awake she fought with Grandfather about this, about the dishonor she was doing the clan by not presenting herself as a woman-but Subaru pointed out that she’d stopped menstruating when she’d gone Within, and her cycle hadn’t recovered, so the point was moot. It was possible that she couldn’t bear children-it was possible that her body just didn’t want to. Grandfather had to drop the issue eventually.
---
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There may be an X/1999 continuation of this. Thoughts of it dance in my head.
.