Between Breaths.

[Movazi]

It’s raining.

Face tilted upward, Movazi closed her eyes and opened her mouth as the droplets pelted her face. There were no toxins here for her to worry about: she already had It. This new era plague that the Japanese government who had become all but synonymous with the Cyber-Angelic Corp avoided, hunted, and killed in turns. The water brought all the pollution back down to the earth, poisoning the very air she breathed. Still, she had caught what everyone avoided, and had nothing to worry about. So, she threw her head back and caught the rain with her open mouth, savoring the fresh taste of it and the cool sensation on her tongue.

Hours earlier she had informed Nakamura that she and the rest of her troop had the day off. The Japanese woman had given her that small, gaelic smile as she bowed and left the room, the rest following after. It was a game of theirs, one they both knew and understood, that today was a make believe day. Movazi would pretend she was alone, and Nakamura would pretend that she happened to be ‘in this part of town’ if anything untoward happened. Otherwise, she let the younger female keep the façade that they weren’t here and that no one was witnessing her private actions. Both knowing it was false as they equally knew that Movazi desired at least the illusion of solitude.

Closing her eyes, her head dropped forward, and she looked ahead of her. It hadn’t taken her as long as she had thought it would, to get from her apa’to to Narakuyama. Somewhere in her memories she recalled earlier images of a place not so run down, so tired and sick looking. Runaways, homeless, addicts, they all littered the streets and had looked hungrily at her when she drove by on her sleek jet-bike. Even to them, she looked like money, but unlike so many others they knew that dead expression on her face. Knew it better than the wearer herself, and he chosen to leave this golden koi be. Maybe the bigger, badder, more desperate criminals would take the unwitting bait, but she had seen none and didn’t miss the lack.

Today, she was not in the mood for a fight.

The actual trip itself had taken only thirty minutes, but it had taken her eleven years to come here. Whenever she considered doing it, some unknown force within her stilled her and she soon forgot about it. Memories of police coming to the door, of sitting her father down and speaking in hushed Japanese while she strained to her every word as if her life depended on it. Watching as his eyes went dead at hearing the news. He had sat in the living room for hours before gathering her up in his arms and telling her in the only way he knew how.

“Gigi, your mère is dead.”

White flowers carefully arranged in a small bouquet with a red ribbon wrapped around the stems were held gently in her left hand. Movazi herself was dressed head to toe in black, her hair left loose to hang down her back. She could see her final destination, but she had stopped in the middle. A block back, her bike coded and secured against theft [save for the unlikely occurrence someone ran up and cut one of her fingers off]. A block ahead, the last place mama had seen, lived, breathed at. That unseen force had her stuck betwixt the two, and for a moment she entertained the thought of going back.

She took a step forward, the clack of heeled boots echoed with each step. It was if the cosmos had convened for this moment and created a perfect setting, as there was not a soul to be seen. People could be heard, shouts and screams, but only the warning that there may perhaps be a reason for the desertion of this area worried her mind. That was fine, though, Movazi didn’t intend to linger here for very long. A sigh escaped her when she reached the corner of the condemned building. Bending to one knee, she artfully arranged the flowers before laying them against the bent light post.

“I miss you, mama.” Movazi whispered, fingers brushing against the edges of the white blooms.

[Narin Carter]

Rain? It always seems to be raining...

Narakuyama. Returning to Japan had placed a combination of odd feelings into his mind about a lot of things, and Narakuyama was one of them. Travelling around the world, witnessing the devastation of the war first hand, it changed you as a person. It made you think about the more peaceful things in life, and afterwards you try to grasp them and to squeeze them, otherwise they slip away like sand into the wind.

For Narin, Narakuyama had its own peaceful aura, away from the foul creatures that roamed in the shadows and the criminals that lurked with them, it was silent. Beneath the new city district above, there lay a calm, a place where one could come to be at peace of mind. That was where Narin lay, in the dark corners of the top of this building, sat on his throne, an old leather conference chair, at the head of a large varnished table.

In Narakuyama, it was as if time itself had stopped. The insides of these buildings? They were pristine for the most part, as they were when they were left and evacuated during the war. It was almost spooky, like a ghost town, only creatures far worse than ghosts now roamed the streets.

Peace was always hard to obtain, and rather his mind lay on the issues at hand. Done with the darkness, Narin's hand would come from his face and he would begin on his way towards the entrance of the building. Taking the old stairs down his right hand would slide down, grasping the bannister, feeling it against his skin. He would reach outside, his face hit by the small amounts of rain which dripped down by a gap from the district above, underneath the railway line. He would look down, stopping his foot as it shadowed over a boquet of white flowers.

"Oh..." He would say as he retracted his boot, placing it down against the cold concrete step before the flowers. He would look down at the woman, seemingly lost in emotion and thought.

[Movazi]

“‘Oh’ indeed, monsieur.”

Movazi had reflexively shifted her hand to hover protectively over the delicate lilies and chrysanthemums. Eleven funeral flowers giving a stark contrast to the quickly darkening sidewalk, her Russian and French influences stood proudly in her choice. The art of flower arrangements was all but dead, and, as she lifted her gaze to meet the man’s she held it steadily, she wondered if he understood what this nosegay represented. The Japanese were more aware of such things than many other countries, but it was still considered a more feminine interest. Abruptly, as if suddenly remembering something, she blinked and turned away.

“Gomen nasai.” She half mumbled in perfect Tokyo-accented Japanese before standing slowly. It wasn’t clear what, exactly, she was apologizing for. Anything from being in front of a door she thought had led to an empty building to staring like some gaijin was up for debate.

Pushing inky black strands away from her face [it hadn’t taken long for them to become sopping wet], she stepped politely back to give way. Silently, a part of her whispered that it was time to head back, to leave her small tribute as good was good enough. And yet she lingered as she waited for some emotion to well up within her. There had been no tears, no fits or tantrums when her mother had passed. Only a sullen silence that could have been just as easily attributed to her exile, though from Movazi that was an emotional outburst. Society told her that she should be torn to shreds about the passing of someone she had been so close to, that this vague since of missing her was paltry.

Not that it mattered now, at any rate. Her brief séance had ended with this new arrival. It was a small comfort, however, to see another blue eyed non-Japanese face before her. A gentle reminder that there was a much larger world outside of this precious Nihon.

--

Monsieur: Mister.
Gomen nasai: sorry.
Gaijin: foreigner, outsider.
Nihon: Japan.

[Narin Carter]

Monsieur. The foreign word entered into his ears, and he was suddenly hit with a familiar sense of Nostalgia. It had been so long since he had heard the words of the French language uttered to him, so much so that it had almost been erased from his mind. Hearing it again, it was somewhat refreshing and he took slight comfort in the fact that perhaps she was actually of French Nationality. That thought, however was short lived as she stood, her silky black hair swaying as her body moved and she apologised to him in Japanese.

From above, the sound of a train, making its last transmute of the night, drowned out all else from down in the lower reaches of this part of Narakuyama, and like the building behind him, all else appeared to stop momentarily. Only to resume as the sound faded into the cold night. Stepping off from the the building step and onto the old and broken side walk, his deep blue eyes would look to her, grasping her in their mysterious gaze.

"What exactly are you apologising for?" He would ask the woman, only assuming that she spoke English by her previous response.