![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[anime] [fic] k project -- no, god, why.
**
Today, Anna is nine years and seven months old. She knows this, because Honami takes her to a special kind of market. It is outdoors, stifling, crowded. She fists her hand against her aunt's leg and listens as Honami explains: they call it a "flea market" even though there are no fleas for sale. It's all wooden panels and paintings and trinkets bronzed with age. People are crowding all around, skin brushing skin, the air alive with heat, and it's all right to be here, all right to pass through them: they don't mean harm. Their bodies crackle, vein and bone, with distraction and conversation and Anna thinks: it's good to be outside. The skies open, her skin warm with light. It's good to be here.
Honami leads because she has been in the market before; she knows the way, and so she strides through stall and stall again, past one open spread after another as Anna hurries after her, taking only quick skimming glimpses through the gaps between the wide strides of passersby. They don't go out as often since the fires started. It isn't safe. Nobody knows when another street might be laid to tar and scorch.
("I do," she said once to her aunt, who only sighed and smoothed down her sleeves.
"Anna," Honami said gently, "you don't have to take everything onto your shoulders, either.")
She doesn't mean to run. It's something she feels more than she sees, and the sensation's strange enough that her legs are caught in a lope before the rest of her's understood. She's tripping and following it before her eyes have registered the sight across the dry grounds: a spray of metals scattered across a thin little picnic blanket on the grass, their designs worked into simple rings and bracelets and necklaces: shaped into caught gears, circles twined into one another strung on leather. They'd be too big for her--even Honami's wrist, she thinks, would be too thin, would see them slip off and rolling away on the train. Only a man's wrist would fit them, and it doesn't matter.
It's warm here. She's warm.
"Ah," she says, as Honami catches up. "Beautiful."
The seller tilts his head up and brightens. "Is it?" he says--he sounds nearly surprised by the compliment, but the curve of his smile alights like a wing. He's half-sprawled over his own wares at once, gesturing at each of his products. "I just started making them last month--haha, it's interesting, you know? Even if it does take a long time! It's pretty absorbing--if I had to be anywhere else, or take care of anyone, I don't know if I could have made them turn out as well. There's a really intricate process to the metal-shaping if you want to melt it down to be worn--ah, it's tricky, but once you get the hang of it--"
"You're an amateur, then?" Honami interrupts, delicate as a surgeon's hand. Her niece has taken an interest in the seller's products, and so it's in her interest to bargain him down to the best price possible. Anna sees the matter at once even without a glimpse through the marble. This is her aunt: sharp-wristed, her jaw drawn sharp like the line of a crane's throat, earnest and beautiful. She is glad to be here. She is glad.
The seller only laughs and spreads his hands. "If you want to put it like that, I'm probably an amateur at everything. But that's not what it's really about, is it?"
"And what is it about?"
"That depends!" His smile's comforting as light. "Shall we see what she likes?"
They both turn to look at her, then. Anna does not flush, though she thinks that she should; it is a thing that girls do, that children do. Honami would like it if she behaved more like a child now and then--which is not to say that her aunt does not love her, but there is love which distinguishes and love which clasps things it can hold onto, and then there is unconditional love, which says, it does not matter what you are, there's no need to remember your name or your family or the way you wish for fuller skirts or might not want real dolls to play with or how you roll your marbles in the dark for something to see--none of that matters, because you are here. Love which accepts but never tries to hold on, too uncertain to touch. Here is the only condition for your love.
Love which depends on what you are, Anna thinks, love which wants you to be one kind of light or flame. Love which understands what you are. That would have been nice too.
But the jewelry seller's tilted his head to her, quizzical and open. He has a sweet sort of smile: the kind that people want to smile back to. Anna does not know how. She reaches into her pocket instead--clasps her marbles tight between her fingers. The vision shivers up through bone, and she sees--she knows. "You," she says. "You should be somewhere else."
His eyes widen, as a good audience's should. "Should I?"
The accusation tips on her tongue like poison, like a surprise. She doesn't want an audience. "There's a fire," she says, a little louder--feels Honami stiffen beside her, as do a few other passersby, who whisper to one another before they rustle away. Fire's grown to be an unpopular sound since they heard the stories: a man roaming in the dark with light and scars trailing in his wake. She says it anyway, determinedly: "It's warm--it's supposed to be warm. That's what he wants. He's waiting for you."
He cocks his head, a boy trying to reel an old memory out of dark waters. "Eh?" the jewelry-maker says. "Isn't it summer? It's a little hot for fires right now! Maybe in the winter, we'll--"
"No." If there is any word she means, it's this--but he doesn't understand; he's looking at her with the corners of his mouth still tipped up in a caricature of brightness, nothing more than a seller's smile, waiting for a price to be named. She says it, flutes it, voices it and stands in place, waiting for him: "You have to go to him. He was your king first." But the vision is nothing she understands, and less still anything he sees. She says, a little fiercely, "He'll never be anyone else's."
The jewelry-maker studies her, a little too steadily, like a topaz caught between his lashes. Then he tips his head back and laughs. "A king?" he says. His wide eyes are guileless, and utterly stripped of any trace of red. "Ah, I remember saying something like that, I think! A long time ago."
He's deft-handed as he moves, and sweetly smiling. With a confidence like the sky tearing apart from lightning, all the day's promise and hope wracked into a single afternoon--standing at the edge of his raggedy blanket with all his makings at her feet, Anna thinks, he is possibly one of the most beautiful people she has ever seen.
Like this, he'll live a long time, she thinks.
In the afternoon, oblivious to prediction and danger, the jewelry-seller kneels on his blanket and reaches up to ruffle her hair. "But that was a very long time ago," he says, and his voice is kind. "What I told him, then--it was just a game. That's all."
Anna tilts her head up--looks at him steadily. "What was his name?" she says.
His gaze is bright, and gentle: it reflects her as water does, in light and warmthless curves. "His name?" Totsuka Tatara echoes. "You know--I'm not really sure."
Today, Anna is nine years and seven months old. She knows this, because Honami takes her to a special kind of market. It is outdoors, stifling, crowded. She fists her hand against her aunt's leg and listens as Honami explains: they call it a "flea market" even though there are no fleas for sale. It's all wooden panels and paintings and trinkets bronzed with age. People are crowding all around, skin brushing skin, the air alive with heat, and it's all right to be here, all right to pass through them: they don't mean harm. Their bodies crackle, vein and bone, with distraction and conversation and Anna thinks: it's good to be outside. The skies open, her skin warm with light. It's good to be here.
Honami leads because she has been in the market before; she knows the way, and so she strides through stall and stall again, past one open spread after another as Anna hurries after her, taking only quick skimming glimpses through the gaps between the wide strides of passersby. They don't go out as often since the fires started. It isn't safe. Nobody knows when another street might be laid to tar and scorch.
("I do," she said once to her aunt, who only sighed and smoothed down her sleeves.
"Anna," Honami said gently, "you don't have to take everything onto your shoulders, either.")
She doesn't mean to run. It's something she feels more than she sees, and the sensation's strange enough that her legs are caught in a lope before the rest of her's understood. She's tripping and following it before her eyes have registered the sight across the dry grounds: a spray of metals scattered across a thin little picnic blanket on the grass, their designs worked into simple rings and bracelets and necklaces: shaped into caught gears, circles twined into one another strung on leather. They'd be too big for her--even Honami's wrist, she thinks, would be too thin, would see them slip off and rolling away on the train. Only a man's wrist would fit them, and it doesn't matter.
It's warm here. She's warm.
"Ah," she says, as Honami catches up. "Beautiful."
The seller tilts his head up and brightens. "Is it?" he says--he sounds nearly surprised by the compliment, but the curve of his smile alights like a wing. He's half-sprawled over his own wares at once, gesturing at each of his products. "I just started making them last month--haha, it's interesting, you know? Even if it does take a long time! It's pretty absorbing--if I had to be anywhere else, or take care of anyone, I don't know if I could have made them turn out as well. There's a really intricate process to the metal-shaping if you want to melt it down to be worn--ah, it's tricky, but once you get the hang of it--"
"You're an amateur, then?" Honami interrupts, delicate as a surgeon's hand. Her niece has taken an interest in the seller's products, and so it's in her interest to bargain him down to the best price possible. Anna sees the matter at once even without a glimpse through the marble. This is her aunt: sharp-wristed, her jaw drawn sharp like the line of a crane's throat, earnest and beautiful. She is glad to be here. She is glad.
The seller only laughs and spreads his hands. "If you want to put it like that, I'm probably an amateur at everything. But that's not what it's really about, is it?"
"And what is it about?"
"That depends!" His smile's comforting as light. "Shall we see what she likes?"
They both turn to look at her, then. Anna does not flush, though she thinks that she should; it is a thing that girls do, that children do. Honami would like it if she behaved more like a child now and then--which is not to say that her aunt does not love her, but there is love which distinguishes and love which clasps things it can hold onto, and then there is unconditional love, which says, it does not matter what you are, there's no need to remember your name or your family or the way you wish for fuller skirts or might not want real dolls to play with or how you roll your marbles in the dark for something to see--none of that matters, because you are here. Love which accepts but never tries to hold on, too uncertain to touch. Here is the only condition for your love.
Love which depends on what you are, Anna thinks, love which wants you to be one kind of light or flame. Love which understands what you are. That would have been nice too.
But the jewelry seller's tilted his head to her, quizzical and open. He has a sweet sort of smile: the kind that people want to smile back to. Anna does not know how. She reaches into her pocket instead--clasps her marbles tight between her fingers. The vision shivers up through bone, and she sees--she knows. "You," she says. "You should be somewhere else."
His eyes widen, as a good audience's should. "Should I?"
The accusation tips on her tongue like poison, like a surprise. She doesn't want an audience. "There's a fire," she says, a little louder--feels Honami stiffen beside her, as do a few other passersby, who whisper to one another before they rustle away. Fire's grown to be an unpopular sound since they heard the stories: a man roaming in the dark with light and scars trailing in his wake. She says it anyway, determinedly: "It's warm--it's supposed to be warm. That's what he wants. He's waiting for you."
He cocks his head, a boy trying to reel an old memory out of dark waters. "Eh?" the jewelry-maker says. "Isn't it summer? It's a little hot for fires right now! Maybe in the winter, we'll--"
"No." If there is any word she means, it's this--but he doesn't understand; he's looking at her with the corners of his mouth still tipped up in a caricature of brightness, nothing more than a seller's smile, waiting for a price to be named. She says it, flutes it, voices it and stands in place, waiting for him: "You have to go to him. He was your king first." But the vision is nothing she understands, and less still anything he sees. She says, a little fiercely, "He'll never be anyone else's."
The jewelry-maker studies her, a little too steadily, like a topaz caught between his lashes. Then he tips his head back and laughs. "A king?" he says. His wide eyes are guileless, and utterly stripped of any trace of red. "Ah, I remember saying something like that, I think! A long time ago."
He's deft-handed as he moves, and sweetly smiling. With a confidence like the sky tearing apart from lightning, all the day's promise and hope wracked into a single afternoon--standing at the edge of his raggedy blanket with all his makings at her feet, Anna thinks, he is possibly one of the most beautiful people she has ever seen.
Like this, he'll live a long time, she thinks.
In the afternoon, oblivious to prediction and danger, the jewelry-seller kneels on his blanket and reaches up to ruffle her hair. "But that was a very long time ago," he says, and his voice is kind. "What I told him, then--it was just a game. That's all."
Anna tilts her head up--looks at him steadily. "What was his name?" she says.
His gaze is bright, and gentle: it reflects her as water does, in light and warmthless curves. "His name?" Totsuka Tatara echoes. "You know--I'm not really sure."