Post
by DanjaDoom » Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:47 am
Annnd here we go. I'm very tired and have to wake up in 4 or 5 hours, so I figured I should post this already. It's another wonderful prequel chapter.
Shout out to my homie MirageGSM for proofreading it through and giving me tips. Ride Together Die Together.
It goes without saying that I love comments on my stories, so please let me know what you think!
Burning Satellite of Love
“Iced Mocha?”
Suzu politely declines the offer, still not fully invested in the idea that the drinks in this classroom weren’t spiked to make her “open up” more.
Naomi shrugs and sets the pitcher down onto the mahogany desk, littered with so many coffee stains it now resembles the world’s most uncooperative game of Whack-A-Mole. Nearby, club president Natsume clicks away at the keyboard with great studiousness. Her eyes dart to and fro with precision, as if channeling the cherry wood pendulum on her desk.
Her singular composition ends with a final click on the keyboard and the whir of the ink printer at the back of the room.
“Naomi.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve taken the liberty of typing up our projected earnings for this month. Would you mind running it down to Ms. Hakamichi downstairs?”
“Right away, ma’am!”
Suzu watches her zoom past, unsure of whether to be impressed or nauseated by the trying-too-hard formality of these two. They could give the student council a run for their money. That’s probably their plan, in fact.
“Why not just email it to her later?” she ponders aloud.
“Formality is grand, preening is grandeur,” Natsume chuckles, starry-eyed like a pre-teen gushing over her new boyfriend. It elicits some dirty images of Natsume alone at night with her spreadsheets in Suzu's overactive mind.
“Now, shall we start with the interview?” she continues, rolling forwards in her comically over sized synthetic leather chair. Her eagerness to move on to the next subject lends credence to the theory that she’s not entirely sure what that mantra of hers actually means.
“I’m not yet mentally prepared,” replies the misty-eyed girl curtly. She can go tit for tat when it comes to being difficult if need be. “In fact, I’d like to ask you a question, if I could.”
“Oh? What about?” Natsume inquires. Like any good journalist, her true disposition is difficult to discern, but even now Suzu can sense a growing botheration emanating from her.
“Why me?”
“Sorry?”
“Why did you invite me up here? I don’t think I’m all that terribly interesting.”
A great warmth radiates over the amber-haired girl’s body, as if she were yearning for this question. Her body is limber and bright as she begins her obviously well-rehearsed oration.
“A few weeks before this year started," she begins. "Ms. Inoue and I sat down to discuss our plans for the future. After a long... eventful chatter, we decided that, if we could do but one thing before we leave this school, it’s this.”
Whatever “this” is, it’s valuable enough to warrant a few glimmering seconds of dramatic silence.
“To create a web of human interaction! A link, so to speak... are you still following me?”
Suzu nervously shakes her head. “Not particularly?”
Natsume gives her an understanding grin that may or may not be condescending.
“Simply put, our aim is to create a detailed and intricate portfolio of our entire class. I mean, why go through the trouble of going up to people and getting to know them? That could take weeks! So, we decided that, in the interest of promoting community and togetherness, Ms. Inoue and I would take time out of our days to interview our fellow classmates. And you’re our first subject! Pretty exciting, no?”
No.
“Maybe. What were you going to ask?” Suzu ponders cautiously.
“Oh, nothing too personal, trust me!” Natsume guarantees with a wave. Her reassuring tone is none too reassuring.
Soon the return of Naomi, sweaty from a hurried race around the campus, brings an end to Suzu’s stalling tactic.
“Did she get the memo?”
Naomi nods in the affirmative while she attempts to catch her breath. Wiping away sweat from her brow with a tidily folded hankie from her shirt pocket, she dutifully takes a seat next to her club president.
“Shall we begin, Miss Suzuki?”
She shrugs in resignation. Why not just get it over with?
“Perfect!”
Did they just read her mind? The duo produce a sleek, silver tape recorder and place it squarely between themselves and Suzu. They want to be sure to capture every last bit of information they can, it appears. Efficiency.
“First question,” begins the bespectacled girl. “What’s your favorite color?”
Easy enough. “Mandarin orange or midnight blue.”
Naomi looks up in surprise. “Hmm, strange, I would've expected it to be more along the cyan line...”
Suzu raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Oh... no reason.”
“Let’s move on, shall we?” Natsume suggests. Naomi nods, shamefaced.
“Favorite novel?”
“Don Quixote and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”
“A favorite television show?”
“I like Mystery Science Theater 3000 myself. It’s a television masterpiece, I’d say.”
They nod civilly, like two intellectuals forced to take in the inane ramblings of a bumpkin. They press on all the same, for the sake of journalistic integrity. Plus, the pizza won’t arrive for at least another twenty minutes.
“Well,” Natsume resumes. “This is shaping up to be quite the introductory chapter! I’m foreseeing good things for this little project of ours. Now, I think it’s time for the next series of questions.”
The narcoleptic girl shrugs. “Your call.”
“Tell me, Miss Suzuki, do you have any fond memories of your parents?"
The word reverberate through the walls of her mind. It makes beads of nervous sweat rise to the pale skin on her hands.
Parents...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Dad! Dad! Look what I drew for art class!”
The eager young girl shoves the creased mess of paper into her father’s face, her smile threatening to engulf a healthy portion of her face.
“It’s me and Banana playing dodgeball! Do you like it?”
On the contrary, the short, balding man more widely known as Suzu’s father seems more caught up in cleaning up the brown java stains that were spilled onto his shirt during his daughter’s kamikaze attack. He retreats back into the kitchen, grumbling silently the entire way, not even having taken a glimpse at his daughters work.
The little girl remains unfettered. She’ll just root herself to the ground until he comes back! Its foolproof.
As expected, her father returns to the dining room, the scattered coffee stains now replaced with one large water stain across his chest. As he begins to finish his scrambled egg and toast breakfast, he finally acknowledges her.
“Suzu, you know that’s not what you were supposed to draw,” he scolds coldly. “Go try it again.”
And that’s it. Father and daughter time is over for the day and will be until the process repeats tomorrow morning. In some vain effort to feign companionship, she sits perpendicular to him and folds her arm over the white tablecloth. Despite the abundance of warm reds and yellows her mother’s painted around the room, the atmosphere between the two of them is distinctly chilly.
Her father leaves five minutes later, and Suzu returns to her room once again.
Sometimes she contemplates tearing down her walls. Or maybe bringing in buckets and buckets of paint to splash onto her furniture. Maybe she’ll shove her toys into the cabinets? She doesn’t want to do any of this, of course. She loves her walls, her room, and especially her toys. She also loves her father. But sometimes it’s as if he doesn’t return the favor. Even if it takes her destroying something, all she wants is to be... something. Yelled at. Laughed at. Hugged.
Anything to let her know that he’s not an android. Anything to let her know that he knows she exists.
A muffled squeak permeates from underneath a nearby cabinet. No sooner does she turn her head to inspect than a blonde blur rockets over to her feet and begins to paw cutely at her skirt.
“Banana!” she coos in a hushed tone. Careful to make sure that her mother hasn't woken up yet, the young narcoleptic girl brings the beady-eyed creature onto her lap. He burrows his head into the pocket of her blouse, leaving a maelstrom of yellow fur in his wake.
With a nostalgic smile, she runs her fingertip along the ridge of his head.
“At least I know you still care, Banana.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I... went fishing.”
Natsume raises a skeptical brow. “Fishing?”
“Yeah, fishing. I went fishing with my family when I was younger... I caught a big fish. It was fun.”
With a light shrug, they continue with their interview.
“As we all know,” Naomi articulates, donning the interviewing helm. “The relationship between a mother and daughter is a treasured one. Tell us, Ms. Suzuki, are there any particular memories of your mother from your younger days that you hold especially dear?”
“My mother?” Suzu repeats, sweat brimming on her forehead.
“Yes,” she repeats, a bit slower for the nervous girl’s sake. “Your mother.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Suzu, dear, would you like something to eat? I bought some... sandwiches.”
The woman abruptly stows away her snack foods back into the dusty blue lunchbox, disheartened by the sight of her daughter. She’s cried herself to sleep again.
It’s been a hard two days for both of them. The backseat of a minivan, no matter how nice, is no place for a girl in her first year of high school to stay. But they can’t go back. Not now.
Word travels fast in their town. Suzu already gets made fun of for her narcolepsy. Whenever she walks by, people laugh and run out of the way to avoid her “falling on top of them.” What would it do to her to have a mother who ran away from her problems? To have a mom who ran away from her worries instead of fighting them head on?
Nonetheless, she can’t help but smile when she sees her little girl. She’s since become a young woman, of course, but it’s impossible to look into her eyes and not see the bubbly girl encouraging her mother to have an emergency plan for any alien invasions.
But alas, time travels fast when you reminisce, and already the skyline has begun to turn a shade of regal purple. Placing the keys in the ignition, she pauses for a short while before driving off. A friend of hers has offered to put them up in her family's motel while things get settled, however long that will take. Months, maybe.
A groggy voice moans from the backseat.
“Did you have a nice nap, dear?” the woman chuckles.
The young girl pats away specks of dust from her windbreaker. The chill of the fall months always rolls through this part of Japan first, giving its residents the gift of the autumn leaves before anyone else on the island. Right now though, leaves aren't the most pressing issue on the minds of the two women in the car.
“Mostly...”
She gives her daughter a sad smile. She hasn't stopped smiling for the last few days, as if stopping would collapse the facade of rightness she’s built up.
“Mom?”
“Yes honey?”
“Are we going home soon?”
The smile cracks. Just a little bit. She still needs to hold on.
“Not for a while, I’m afraid. No.”
“... Is it because of me?”
“No!” she half-yells. Her daughter doubles back in surprise, so she measures herself and begins to speak with a much quieter intone.
“Sweetie, if there’s one thing I want you to know, it’s that none of this happened because of you. This is just something that’s been boiling over for a while, that’s it. Your father and I... we just can’t work anymore. That’s all there is to it. Do you understand?”
Her daughter nods wordlessly, still not wholly convinced by her mother’s tale. The sad truth is, she shouldn't be. It’s a lie. A lie with the best intentions, but a lie nonetheless. Suzu’s condition and the growing effects it was having on her school life had only succeeded in widening the distance between her and her father until their home life had become almost unbearable. So, when her mother told him one late night that she was leaving, he didn't put up too much of a fight. He almost seemed to be expecting it, in fact.
Of course, Suzu doesn't know any of this. But she’s a smart girl. She’ll figure it out someday. Maybe sooner than anyone realizes. How she’ll take it is a matter that no one can know for sure.
“Mom? Are you alright?”
The woman keep her eyes transfixed towards the darkening sky and the people passing them by like rolling stones. The street lamps pop on. Some of the light glistens off of the tears on her cheeks.
“Just fine, honey.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“When I was seven she bought me Banana.”
Her questioners stare at each other in bafflement.
“Your mom bought you some fruit?”
“What? Oh, no, Banana is a ferret... best ferret in the world.”
Hold the tears in, girl. You can’t let them see you cry. That’s the last thing you want to do.
Natsume clears her throat with just a hint of uncertainty. “And now we've arrived at our final question! It’s been quite an exciting process, wouldn't you agree?”
“Most definitely!” concurs a bubbly Naomi. Natsume chuckles.
“I was talking to Miss Suzuki, but your enthusiasm is welcomed, Miss Inoue!”
Naomi rubs her head in embarrassment and resumes her interviewing duties. The grin on her face is highly unsettling.
“Now, Miss Suzuki, we as teenagers understand well the trials and tribulations of a relationship--”
Uh-oh.
“--so, our question to you is, do you have any tantalizing relationship stories to tell? It could really benefit some people in the department of love!”
This foray into gossip mongering is a thoroughly expected, though still thoroughly unpleasant, turn of events. Still, though, it catches Suzu off guard.
“I... wouldn't know anything about that,” she stammers.
Like sharks smelling blood in the water, her two captors grin from ear-to-ear with the most devilish of glee.
“Surely you've at least fancied a boy?” Natsume pries.
“Well...”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CLONK.
“Sorry about that!”
Suzu dismisses the boy’s worries with a wave, tossing them back their baseball.
“Guess that puts an end to our sandwich lunch, huh?”
The boy sitting on the knoll next to her takes a thoughtful bite from his chicken salad sandwich. Jin could make mowing the lawn look like a spiritual epic. It had something to do with his eyes.
“Maybe you just put those boys up to it because you don’t like my cooking?” his partner accuses.
He laughs. “First of all, making a sandwich isn't technically cooking. Second of all, if I really hated your cooking that much, I would've told you a while ago.”
Her emerald eyes bore into the side of his head like a drill. “Would you really tell me?”
“No, probably not,” he admits sheepishly. The two of them share a laugh as the early afternoon breeze starts to pick up. In the few months since she’s been here, the park has quickly become a favorite spot of hers. The path that leads into it is off the main road by a mile or so, leaving it a secluded spot used almost exclusively by the nearby residents. A few of those residents, of course, being Jin and his family. The nicest people in the world, in Suzu’s eyes.
A new world? Or just a substitute world? Will she ever go back to that world she once knew? How will she settle back if she does?
“Thinking?”
Why does he always know these things? What makes him so damn good at that?
“A little bit.”
“What about?”
“You shouldn't ask a girl that question!” she chastises, stealing away the last bit of his sandwich for good measure. The chicken actually does taste a bit under cooked. Maybe he was right about the “bad chef” thing...
“My apologies. You just seemed to be lost about something.”
“What, you've never thought hard about things?”
Jin pops his shoulder bone and leans back against the tree, hands deep in his coat pockets.
“Nope.”
“Nope?”
“Nope.”
“Never?”
“Not even once! Life goes too fast for me to think about things that don’t really matter in the end. You come in with nothing, you leave with nothing. In the end, you’ve lost nothing! Right?”
His morbidly optimistic attitude would be off-putting if it was coming from anyone other than Jin.
“I guess,” Suzu nods.
Silence rings out through the landscape. The kids have long since stopped their game of ball and have begun a heated game of Pokemon. This goes on for awhile, until the kid in the red begins to cry and everyone’s forced to go back home by his overbearing mother.
“Hey, Suzu?”
That was Jin’s voice, almost drowned out by the sudden breeze that's carried across the bumpy scenery. He sounds so at peace when he’s tired, as if sleep welcomes him like an old friend. It stirs up a bit of envy in Suzu.
“Yeah?” she responds.
Shifting his light frame against the tree trunk, he pulls the brim of his hat down over his eyes, leaving only his thin, parted lips visible.
“Let’s not change.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
“No.”
A bit abrupt, maybe, but it got it’s point across. Natsume and Naomi flinch backward at her.
“No... what?”
“I-I can’t...” she begins. Whatever words could have formed in her mouth crash land faster than a burning satellite. That’s actually a fairly fitting description of how this entire day’s gone.
She jumps to her feet, sending her rolling chair flying back a good few feet. Everything inside is bottled up. It feels like she has a fever. There’s a tsunami of things Suzu wants, needs, and has to say right now.
“This interview is over.”
For now, she’ll just settle with that.
Both members of the club look to be at a loss as to what to do. Technically, yes, the interview is over. They just didn't expect things to end quite in this manner. That manner being a busted office chair.
“Um, I’m sorry for that, by the way...”
“It-It’s fine,” Natsume hurriedly assures her. “We've been meaning to order some new furniture for some time. I’m pretty sure that was around before the school was even built. Naomi, get the trashcan from the closet, will you?”
Her assistant dutifully searches through the nearby storage space. She never takes her eyes away from Suzu, as if breaking contact would be grounds for a severe facial mauling. All three of them remain silent in the room, each responsible in their own little way for the most disastrous non sports related interview ending ever.
“You can leave, if you want to, Miss Suzuki,” the president tells her. Despite the occurrences, she offers a dignified smile towards her inaugural guest of honor.
With a hasty bow, Suzu makes for the exit but can’t help but to linger at the threshold for just a little while longer, out of sight. What happened in there, exactly? She picks up the two voices in further discussion as they move around debris.
“Will we be using that for the project?”
“Hell no.”
