@grac: I do always miss your insights. Even with the pedobear.
Sometimes....the words come. It isn't always emo, but the emo pieces are there. They serve a purpose, I imagine. I am not good at articulating my feelings and thoughts, and must filter them through the lens of storytelling. It's my way of processing, I suppose. Idols are terribly convenient for my purposes. I can put them into all sorts of situations.
I'm glad you like the period pieces, I like those too!
And now, more random AU-ness that popped into my head after too much reading and some introspective thoughts in the shower.
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BridgeI first met her when she was going to kill herself.
"What are you doing?"
That was the first, probably dumb thing, out of my mouth. Well, you couldn't quite blame me, could you? You see a complete stranger perched precariously on the top of the siding of a bridge, in that nonchalant way only the either very drunk or the very suicidal do, and my highly honed cop instincts (okay, 6 months out of the academy and very much a ground pounder following a routine beat) picked up the noticeable lack of beer bottles, broken or otherwise, around her, as well as the general lack of that telltale alcoholic stink. I might be out of uniform and definitely off duty, but any right thinking citizen would have done something.
Scratch that, any right thinking citizen would have given her a wide berth, assumed she was a delinquent and/or possibly crazy, and may then perhaps stress their faculties long enough to put a phone call in to the police. Let the uniforms do the job, so to speak.
As I might have mentioned, I
was a uniform, even if I technically wasn't wearing it at the moment, but a strong sense of civic duty was one of the things that had driven me into the force. It certainly wasn't for the glamour of the job (okay, maybe I did watch too many Hollywood movies and the FBI were cool, dammit), or the crummy uniforms, though the pay was pretty decent and it certainly was respectable enough.
But I am getting distracted. Focusing back on the girl on the railing was top priority. I supposed she might have technically been "disturbing the peace", but then again she wasn't doing anything except sitting there quietly, so trying to bring her in on those charges would be questionable at best. Procedure was very important, and trying to arrest her after she had succeeded in disturbing the peace -- aka thrown herself off the bridge -- would be counter-productive and we would then probably have to invoke yet another department for aid in search and rescue, thus leading to more bureaucratic hassle than any junior officer would want to get involved in.
So diplomacy it was, and my famous tact decided to make an appearance. Blunt honesty
did have its moments. This may even have been one of them.
The girl turned her head. It might have been in response to my question; it could also easily have been in response to the wind, that stiff breeze gusting in from the harbour which we faced, the churning black mass invisible beneath the pinpricks of neon on the opposite bank. By chance or design, it was at precisely an angle where the soft glow of the fluorescent lamps that kept the bridge illuminated threw a long shadow across her face, lending something almost theatrically tragic to that countenance. There was something beautifully old noir in the opalescent sheen of her skin, leeched of colour by the dusty white light, highlighted against a grim city background.
And yes, I may have been watching too much
film noir. Hey, they were classics!
I resisted the urge to tip my fedora -- not that I had one -- but I managed to shuffle closer without looking like I was doing so. They taught you that back in the academy, how to move closer, or away, from someone in case you needed to jump them in a hurry, or to run the fuck away so you can call for backup. I correctly deduced that I may have to grab and haul her to safety given half a chance, since I didn't quite like the idea of anyone teetering that precariously off the side of a bridge.
Not that anyone else was on this bridge. It made sense. It was evening, dark out, the wind was gusty and the temperature falling rapidly, and the view here, while scenic, was still somewhat in the middle of nowhere. Or to be more precise, in the middle of somewheres, that in-between place between places where you actually go to have a view, or when you return from having one. The occasional taxi zipped past, the buses came on the hour and the last one had just gone by ten minutes ago -- I would know, that was the one I missed, which was why I was walking because I was too cheap for a taxi and figured that the walk would be bracing after an entire day of being trapped in a cubicle filing paperwork. The joys of being a junior constable. I shrugged imperceptibly. At least it had put me in the right spot for once.
"Enjoying the view."
There was my reply, and coming from anyone else it would have sounded curt, even cheeky. From this girl, however, it sounded wistful, contemplative and distant. I might have heard her sigh, but that could have been the wind. I pulled my windbreaker more closely around myself and half-pretended it was a trenchcoat -- let me have my little indulgences, will ya?
"Is it really better up there?"
I asked this tentatively. I did have some tact. There was a ghost of a smile, I could not be sure. Could be a trick of the light, or maybe even the weight of my own expectations.
Moving unobtrusively, I sidled up to the railing, stepping gingerly over a raised little concrete ledge that was perhaps ankle-high and did absolutely nothing except to act as a physical marker to not step over...but was no dissuasion in of itself. There was a little hollow beyond it that was probably some sort of gutter, but I couldn't have sworn to it. I was no engineer, and the only thing I cared about a bridge was whether it was safe to cross it.
In any case this put me more or less next to the mysterious girl, though she was still sitting on the top of the chest-high railing, while I was still behind it. I leaned casually against the barrier, peering over the edge. All around me, the wind guttered fitfully, whistling a mournful welcome. The darkness below seemed to swallow light.
"It feels as if I might just disappear." The girl said suddenly, her voice stronger than it was earlier, but that might have been due to my new proximity. She shifted, the hem of her dress flapping in the wind. I noticed offhandedly that her boots were very nice.
"It's very dark down there." I agreed amiably, mentally calculating whether I could safely wrestle her down onto the right side of the rails. I certainly didn't want to accidentally push her off, or take a dive with her.
I wasn't suicidal.
There was an awkward silence afterwards. Well,
I felt awkward. The girl seemed to be lost in her own thoughts, staring out into the bay. Her long hair strayed in the wind, and some of it flitted against my face. The faint scent it left was not unpleasant.
I moved minutely closer. She didn't seem to notice. Mentally, I cycled through some of the things I could probably say after man-handling her down from danger. I was fairly sure at this point that I would have to do that, and was positioning myself for such a move. I was still wondering when she spoke again.
"Have you ever wondered if there was at least one place in the universe where you knew you would belong, where you would fit in, without falsehood or appearances, just as yourself?"
I paused. Thought about it for all of five seconds. Then gave my honest, professional opinion.
"I've never thought about it before."
On hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have said that. After all, I had been suspecting that she might have been suicidal, or at least severely unbalanced (pun completely unintended, I swear), so I really shouldn't have been so blatantly insensitive. You really didn't want to antagonize potential hysterics. It could have made things incredibly complicated.
I was lucky though. She laughed.
"Most people don't."
She looked at me. Actually looked at me, instead of the sideways not-really-there kind of glance that I had been on the receiving end of since I had addressed her. I looked back at her with a vague kind of concern, my face knitting into a perplexed expression that matched my current state of mind. She smiled.
"Thank you for being so honest."
I wasn't sure what to say to that. Then she moved, and for half a second I thought she was going to push herself off the bridge before I could do anything, and then I was moving before my mind had even reacted, and the resulting tangle was purely an exercise in physics. Multiple forces were applied in one direction, so the laws of motion were in place.
I hit the ground shoulder-first, and felt something hard impact my nose.
"Ow." My eloquent response.
"Ow." Was the reply I received.
For about two seconds I catalogued the likely places where I would be bruised come next morning. So it didn't quite register on me immediately when the person in my arms started shaking, and my brain didn't quite put together the sound I was hearing with the motion, at least not right away.
She was laughing. Giggling, really. So there I was, on a scabbed over concrete pavement with a giggling female stranger on top of me, and belatedly I realized that my nose was dribbling what could only have been blood. And this girl, a bruise already forming on her forehead, was laughing for gods knew what reason.
So I laughed too. Hey, when you can't beat them, join 'em? Then I wheezed, and sniffled. My nose felt mildly out of joint, and my shoulder really hurt.
"I'm sorry." The girl gasped after a moment, her eyes still dancing with mirth. She had propped herself up by her elbows to look me in the face, and I wondered absurdly for a moment if she was going to kiss me. We certainly were close enough, and I almost shut my eyes again in half a hope that she might.
"Um, will you let me go now?"
Ah. That was when I realized that I still had a death grip around her waist from where I had grabbed her earlier. Flushing slightly, I released her, and she picked herself up awkwardly in the manner of creaking joints and careful hesitation. I appreciated her efforts to not accidentally stab me with the killer heels on her boots. It was a wonder how she managed to even get up onto that railing with heels like those in the first place.
I sat up gingerly, brushing at my nose with the back of one hand. I was right; it came away bloody, and it already felt tender to the touch. Biting back a sigh, I was going to push myself off the ground when a hand was thrust in front of my face.
It was mystery girl, who seemed extremely apologetic about my state (the bloody nose was hard to ignore, pardon the pun). I took her hand -- it was polite to do so -- and she helped me up. I almost didn't want to let go when I stood. Her hand was baby soft and smooth, and I had to resist the urge to rub my thumb against her hand. I didn't want to come across as a pervert, after all.
She was smiling faintly up at me, and now that we were on level ground, it finally registered that she was a lot smaller than me. It wasn't that obvious, what with her heels and all, which left her near eye level with me, but I still remembered how she felt in my arms. I ran a hand through my short mop of hair awkwardly, wondering what to say.
"I'm glad you're okay." I blurted without any finesse. Her lips twitched, and for a moment I thought she might laugh again, but she did nothing of the sort.
"Thanks to you." She gave me another piercing look, a once over that seemed oddly knowing, even smug. It must have been the tilt of her face, or perhaps the shape of her lips...
"You're actually a really cute girl, you know?"
Wait, what? I blinked rapidly, and I was pretty sure my jaw must have dropped in shock. The girl laughed again, then reached out to brush something off my jacket, eyes still twinkling.
"But I like your style, Kudou-
kun." The teasing drawl to the suffix was unmistakable, and my ears burned for some reason. Hurriedly, I looked down at my chest. Sure enough, I'd forgotten to take off my name tag. Even so, for her to immediately pick up that I was a girl...
...right. She was on top of me earlier. And I was clutching her pretty tightly. I don't bind my chest or anything, for all that I dress androgynously. It's a matter of personal choice. With my boyishly short hair, husky voice and practical mannerisms, most people just take me as a boy at first glance. I didn't really bother to correct them in any case, and it was fun to play along sometimes. I wasn't gay or anything, but it was still fun to tease girls who thought I was a good-looking guy.
"Um." My oh-so-eloquent response. What do you say in such a situation?
"Thanks?"
She smiled again, her cheeks dimpling in a way that made me want to pinch them. I liked her better when she smiled. Beautiful as she was earlier, tragic in the waning light, I much preferred it when she was smiling as she was doing right now. I found myself grinning along unconsciously, that boyishly charming one that my friends had scolded me countless times before for unleashing on poor unsuspecting girls. Well, I didn't do it on purpose!
"You should go home, it's late."
I said even as I noticed her shiver, attired as she was only in that black sleeveless dress. Without really thinking about it, I shrugged off my windbreaker and wrapped it around her, to her surprise as she looked up at me with startled eyes.
"You look cold." I offered lamely, jamming my hands into the pockets of my jeans.
"...thank you." Her voice was soft, and I had to strain to hear it over the howling wind. I could smell the ice on it, and I shuffled from one foot to another, feeling the cold stabbing at me through my shirt.
She was saying something, and I had to step closer to hear her. Caught the ends of the sentence "...return it to you?" and surmised the rest of her question.
Pulling out my phone, I noticed how she nodded without me saying anything. I suppose it was an unspoken code of sorts; we exchanged numbers through infrared.
"What's your name?" I asked distractedly as I tried to type with numbed fingers. She looked up from her own screen, the backlit glow shrouding the outlines of her face.
"It's Sayashi. Sayashi Riho."
I hesitated over the name, and she must have seen it, because she stepped up next to me, taking my phone to input the right characters with a wry grin, as if she had done this a million times before. She probably had too, when she returned my phone to me and I looked at the new entry. I had never seen this family name before.
"And you are Kudou...?"
"Haruka. Kudou Haruka. It's nice meeting you, Sayashi-san."
"The same."
I avoided asking her what she was doing up there on the railing, and she seemed grateful for my deliberate oversight. Instead, we walked across the length of the bridge, each passing the another in opposite directions; her towards the city, me away from it. I did not turn to look at her retreating back, and I wager she did not turn to look at mine.
We could have passed each other like this a million times before and never known it, but for this chance encounter. Now she knows my name, and I know hers, and the world seems smaller for it, one more connection made out of the hundreds and thousands of free floating individuals moving on our own personal orbits, close enough to touch but never intersecting.
She may call me to return the jacket, I do not know when this will happen. I know that I would not call her. I liked the jacket, but was resigned to its loss should she never contact me again. After all, I did not know her. I had her number, saved in my phone. Her name, carved into memory. Sayashi, an unusual name. It would be an interesting story to tell over drinks and dinner, the next time I met my friends. The story about the girl I met on the bridge, who may or may not have been about to kill herself, and my timely (?) rescue. My friends would chortle, call me a Casanova (they do enjoy teasing me about my white knight complex with cute girls), and then all would be forgotten after the next round of drinks.
Or would it?
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Testing myself a little. I haven't written anything description heavy in a long time. I still didn't go too heavy on it this time, but well...gotta work that old muscle. Just a little tale spun from the recesses of my head. I can still write. I can. Gotta keep my hand in...
Topic: Estrea's Sandbox [6/4 - Treat] (Read 201512 times)