Description: Hiroshima. Almost seventy years later, it looks like nothing bad could have ever happened here. But to walk around the city while knowing its history, that's something entirely different.
In 1945, a great crime against humanity -- excused by its role in 'stopping' a war that was claiming millions of lives -- was perpetrated right here, in Honkawa-cho. It must hurt the people of Hiroshima that their home is famous mostly for a great wrong done to them. But they are resilient, and have soldiered on, reclaiming their home and their history from the destruction of ages past.
Now? Well. Fujiyama erupted when it wasn't supposed to for a very long time. The Gulf of Thailand froze over. Students in a Southtown private high school killed themselves and left an apocalyptic message. This is a city in tune with the feeling of impending disaster.
Here, on the banks of the Oto River, rosebay -- oleander, the city's flower -- grows plentiful. Hiroshima adopted it because it was the first flower to return after the bombing wiped the slate clean. But in the language of flowers, the oleander stands for 'caution'... and that's probably what's needed here.
Under grey skies, Frei's bright red hair is an all-too-visible splotch of color against too-still water. He appears to be simply standing there, barefoot, staring out at the water with nothing on his mind, the unbuttoned cuffs of his sleeves fluttering in the breeze.
It's strange, but not unusual, until you get close. Getting close, well... let's just say the air is different around Frei. Perceptibly so. Cooler, more comfortable, less... tense.
As a native of the Japanese archipelago, it is impossible to ignore what happened nearly seventy years prior. And it is nearly impossible to walk through the city and -not- be unmoved by the sheer tranquility of the place, in sheer spite of said history.
Such thoughts were what caused Honoka to stop by the park on her way southward. Stepping off the bus by the A-Bomb Dome, she had steeled herself with a sharp intake of fresh air as she approaches the half-obliterated structure, its I-beams hauntingly warped after the devastating mid-air explosion.
Honoka had thought she'd been staring at the dome for five minutes, but the sun had been shining when she arrived. Looking at the flattened cylinder on her wrist, she realizes it'd actually been more like an hour. Drawing in another long breath of fresh air, she adjusts the straps on her small backpack, and starts walking to the west, hoping to catch another stop on the local JR bus route.
And that's when she spots a rather distinctive hairstyle. Catching her face in a dour frown, she hastily corrects it to the smile she feels she -should- be wearing, and hastens her pace down the slope of the riverbank.
Does he look busy? No busier did he seem than she just a few moments prior, she rationalizes. A brief glance at the lazy river gives her pause.
This place feels decidedly different.
Again, she draws in breath, and her eyes widen at the small difference in temperature.
"You seem to have found something interesting, Mr Tsukitomi-Renard." Her voice is crystal-clear, but her tone is colloquial. Friendly, even. Walking closer, she removes the object from her wristband, strings a small rope around her finger, and releases it. A yo-yo. "... My apologies, that was rude of me. My name is Honoka. I am... a fan." An amicable smile follows soon afterward, as she approaches a more comfortable speaking range.
Usually, Frei can't be surprised. At least, not easily. People make ripples in the world around them as they pass through it. Fighters can pull it off; normal people almost never. But right now, he's eminently able to be surprised. Honoka's approach, her speech, even the actual uttering of his family name don't seem to reach him for an uncomfortably long time by social standards. By the actual reckoning of real people time, it's relatively short. Ten full seconds at best.
His green eyes snap open and, probably rather unexpectedly, he takes in a big gasp of air as if he'd been holding his breath, holds that breath in for a second or two, then exhales it with a sharp sound. It's only after this show that he turns and looks at Honoka, taking her in... and giving the young woman a glance into jade-colored eyes that are wide with something approximating fear; certainly, whatever just happened, it was Unpleasant.
And then in the literal blink of an eye, it's gone.
In that brief second, Frei turns around entirely, glancing at Honoka with an expression that registers more curious comprehension than wild confusion, as if he turned the last few seconds off like a switch. "You should probably stick to 'Frei'," he says with a wan smile. "Speaking as someone who grew up with that last name, it's pretty unwieldy."
Honoka isn't entirely sure what to make of the extraordinary pause. Her smile doesn't disappear, but it had started to fade slightly when Frei's breath drew in as it had.
She was beginning to think she had the wrong gaijin. But she's rarely wrong about such things.
She offers a more pleased expression when she is actually addressed. The fearful expression is, however, reflected in her coffee-brown irises for just one moment. "... I... Forgive me, er... Frei-san. I... get a bit... overzealous when reading about fighters I admire." Looking aside for a moment in mild embarassment, as pink washes over her cheeks, she raises one slender finger. "Though I do enjoy the, mm, cadence of it. It is ... fun to say." A faint uptick in her smile, at that notation.
Flick. Her yo-yo descends, lingers for a moment before she snaps it back to her palm. "I didn't mean to disturb you, sir. I really was curious... the air feels different here. Is that what you are studying?"
Cadence, huh? Frei's smile goes from cautiously wan to a more genuine quirk, bordering on the wry. "Half Japanese, half French. And the French half isn't even French; he was Irish." The redhead's father, an Irish violinist, could not have been farther from his total Yamato Nadeshiko of a mother despite her Western first name. The entire bloodline is a melange of influences now and Frei wouldn't have it any other way. "Still. You'll get tired of saying it quick no matter how nice it sounds, trust me."
The yoyo is impossible to ignore; motion draws the eye naturally, but it's her question that he's really focusing on. The yoyo is really just a metronome to occupy his vision. "You noticed that, did you?" The same thing happened recently with Jiro in Paris, and when it was made obvious to him it struck him as a surprise. Apparently it happened again, here, and he didn't even know it: the sage subtly influencing the atmosphere around him without thinking about it as he concentrated on something else.
But this time, he's able to contain his surprise. "Maybe it's this place, you know?" He glances around. "Maybe as the world is going to hell, there's someone looking over us here."
He looks away when he says that last part, however.
Half Japanese. A careful glance would notice a very slight, almost imperceptible flutter in the young woman's eyelashes at that statement, but the wave of emotion doesn't meander its way any further.
"I suppose it would..." She bows her head in apology, as the Japanese mannerism finally asserts itself.
Another long breath is drawn in, a moment of silence passed by another lazy swings of the yo-yo. The gesture could be seen as irritation if most people were to do it, like the smack and pop of bubble gum... but Honoka is not really exuding any sense of unease. Rather, she's thinking, and the motion of the yo-yo represents her working through the correct words. As Frei looks away, the yo-yo makes another silent descent, another barely-audible retrieval. "... Oh, no doubt," she says, lapsing to a Hokkaido dialect. "It don't take anythin' special to feel this. It's too quiet. This place... never sprung back to life like every other city here."
Honoka wraps her arms about her, a sudden chill creeping down her spine. Reverting to standard Japanese, she adds hastily, "Apologies. I... " She shakes her head faintly. "It's hard to not have an emotional reaction to this city." A flick of her wrist sends the yo-yo flying off to the side, the yo-yo cutting a lazy arc before returning to her hand. "I... really like watching you fight. I'm trying to learn more about it."
With a hop backwards, she adopts a... Kyokugen stance, one hand high, one hand in low anticipation, feet in a wider stance. "But I'm not very good yet, haha."
Hm. The stance is eminently familiar to Frei, who is acquainted -- perhaps a little too well in some respects -- with Takuma-sensei's family style in its various forms. He had an inkling this young woman was a fighter; you can usually tell with someone, after a while. There's little differences, barely perceptible things unless you know to look for them, but if you do, they stand out. Even the lazy rolling and unrolling of the yoyo is a physical act with a very specific feel to it.
But this isn't exactly abnormal, at least not for Frei. He's been at this for many years, now, and with a certain degree of notoriety comes an equal degree of being public property, as it were, and he has yet to reach the level of Gene Wilder in "Blazing Saddles." But while Honoka clearly has most of Frei's attention, she doesn't have all of it, and it's noticeable. His gaze wavers every few seconds; worry lines crease the otherwise guileless expression.
Frankly, if he told her he was hearing the whispers of the damned right now, the entire situation would likely go to hell in an instant.
Leylines. Many spiritualists believe places of importance and power in the world are connected by them. As Frei has discovered, leylines are for the most part flows of the natural world's energy. But humans are part of that world and their behaviors affect it, and they've CERTAINLY affected this place. The world's energy is out of sync, dangerously so. The dead are coming back, if the sudden appearance of Jiro from nowhere is any indicator. And here, in Hiroshima, well...
Frei's fighting stance barely even feels like a stance. He sets one foot back behind him, slightly; his hands come to near waist height, palms out and angled toward the ground, fingers somewhat splayed. "'Good' is a pretty relative term, anyway."
Maybe he read her intent wrong. Maybe she just wanted to show she was a fighter.
Some gnawing feeling tells him that he was right, though.
Honoka has been told that, at times, she can be doing just what Frei is now -- distracted glances, turning away at times, staring distractedly at external stimuli. But this is... atypical for her recollection of Frei.
Then again it's not common for cameras to turn on a public figure when they're not ... in public. So maybe this -is- normal for him.
Or maybe not, Honoka rationalizes while flicking the yoyo from her raised hand, retracting into a more casual stance. She's no Kyokugen fighter, she explains with a simple, a sheepish smile.
"This..." Honoka starts, her gaze drifting to a spot past Frei's shoulder, and slowly drifting left. Maybe she's just doing this to mess with him, maybe not. She doesn't give much time to linger on it before concluding, "... is a bad time." Gaze snapping back to Frei, she offers a quick bow. "My apologies." She did want to show she was a fighter, but the mood is off.
Hokkaido-ben again. "'sides, I warn't be much challenge to you, m'sure."
It's only once the tension drains out of that moment that Frei realizes how tense it actually WAS. In a way the phrase 'drains' feels almost literal, as if he could feel the impending fight gathering like static electricity in the tips of his fingers and, once he and Honoka both relax their stances, it grounding itself and dissipating. Yes... it is a bad time. "Maybe," he admits aloud, brushing off his shirt. "But... well. I'll keep you in mind. There may not be a good time ever again."
He means that, too, with every drop of his blood.
"I don't know what I'm studying," Frei says quietly, looking out over the river as he speaks. In the wu sing, the color for the water element is black, not blue; rather than describing water as a mirror of the sky, the color black reflects the unknowable depths of rivers and lakes. Water is the element of mystery and the one commonly associated with divination. Standing here, the sage feels that to his core. The world groans in pain but it is far from articulate, unable to express itself.
Turning back to Honoka, Frei clears his throat. "If you know my style and my career then you probably know what I 'do'," he says carefully, watching her reaction. "Everything that's happening right now, it's no coincidence. There are signs of it everywhere if you know where and how to look. I'm... following the signs. Wondering if I can find some sort of answer."
Why did he share that with her? That's more than Frei told Jiro, a lifelong friend, at least in direct terms. Who is this girl? Why is she here? After a brief second of contemplation, in fact, Frei decides to just ask that question aloud. "But I'm afraid you have the advantage of me, Miss...?"
There may not be a good time every again, he'd said. Her smile fades abruptly; the girl's good at keeping her true emotions concealed beneath a mask, but this one hits her like a punch to the stomach. "Mm," she assents, "Perhaps you're right."
The yo-yo string creaks with frustration once, twice, thrice, yo-yo snapping back to her palm with the force of a slap. A deep breath, through grit teeth and furrowed eyebrow. Maybe she shouldn't have wasted so much time.
The moment passes. Tension -had- receded... then returned... then ebbed once more.
No coincidence. "Someone of your skill should find the answer soon enough, I'm sure," she adds. Her infectious smile returns, ringing a bit more hollow after her expressed frustration.
Closing her eyes again, she slings the yo-yo around her fingertips, effortlessly manipulating the string into a cradle shape so that the yo-yo can rock back and forth. She's =got= to calm down, she tells herself. And what could be more calm than a cradle...
"I'm sorry, Mr... Frei-san. It's Honoka," she says, flicking the yo-yo through another orbit, as it returns casually to her palm. She'd said her name before, but she -did- interrupt the sage in the midst of his study.
"I hope you find what you are looking for," she adds, tilting her chin to look south. As she opens her eyes, she finds herself looking towards the Peace Bell, a somber expression upon her face. Slowly she turns back to Frei, offering a brief curtsy. "I should go."
There is more she could say. But her furrowed brow shows that she no longer trusts herself to say it.
She's sure he'll find an answer. 'Someone of your skill.' Even after all these years it's hard for Frei to think of himself as 'skilled.' Much more often, he thinks of himself as fortunate or blessed, and if he were the type of person who'd google "impostor syndrome" in the wee hours of the morning he'd realize what a problem this line of thinking is. As it is, he merely smiles, unable to keep the tiredness from creeping back into his expression. "Maybe. In my experience, finding answers is easier than people think. It's knowing what to do when you find the answer that's the tricky part."
The truth is, Frei feels like he knows the probable answer here. It's... let's say 'unpleasant' doesn't begin to do it justice. And he might not be able to do anything about it at all.
Does she feel that too, he wonders, not for the first time since they've encountered each other. He can see it, now that he looks -- the haunted edge hiding at the corner of her eyes, echoing at the fringes of her words when she speaks. Maybe it's better they didn't fight. Maybe it's better that, once she leaves, Frei gets the hell out of here too. "Don't be sorry. You didn't do anything wrong."
A hand comes up and he runs it through the dark red of his bangs, breathing out slowly. "Nice to meet you, Honoka. Maybe... let's do this another time. Definitely another PLACE." He says this last with a laugh that is both nervous and grateful, as if he is fearful that she'll find it disrespectful and be upset but is so in need of the release from tension that it doesn't matter anyway.
"I'm sure someone of your skill should be able to find me," he offers with a faint grin.
"Good advice," acknowledges Honoka, a bit more honesty creeping into her smile and her tone. Fingers brush through red-streaked hair as she gets a better look at Frei's jade eyes -- an intense look, as if she might never get a better chance to look.
Looking down sharply, as she catches herself staring, she shuffles backwards a step. Snapping her yo-yo back onto its wristband, she... finds she has no response to the statement that she's done nothing wrong. She feels she has, but she also knows -- from how many times she -offers- apologies, according to friends -- that it's rather futile to argue the point. So she just nods with a brief, tight smile.
"The pleasure's all mine," she offers as a quick interjection, pausing a moment to let Frei continue, and then adding a light laugh. Not that polite laugh you feel you -have- to do after a joke, but a real, honest-to-goodness expression of amused relief. "Most definitely another place," she agrees.
Taking another step back up the riverbank, she takes another deep breath of the odd air. Closing her eyes as she senses the air once more, she repeats, "Definitely."
Reaching to a side pocket of her backpack, she withdraws a brochure for Miyajima. "Now... uhm... off to feed some deer. Get some rest, mm? You look exhausted."
And as she turns to leave, she turns over the phrase she -didn't- respond to in her head: 'I'm sure someone of your skill should be able to find me.' Jogging gingerly up the hill to the bridge, Honoka hopes that future meeting takes place under better circumstances.
Log created on 20:32:56 08/27/2014 by Honoka, and last modified on 00:09:00 08/28/2014.