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I Remember

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Chapter 1

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A/N: Haha… Long time no type. I feel like I’m walking on my toes constantly. Life’s been pretty tedious for me. T.T I hope you’ve all been well! Here, summer has just ended and fall’s beginning to wither itself in. That also means my birthday’s withering itself in too! Yeah!

So here’s a little present to start the coming season (even though the setting is during summer). It’s a new idea. I was inspired so please excuse me.

However, be nice to me! If you’ve read, please leave a comment. I’d like to read what you want to say. Please don’t flame. I’m not a wall. If you’re angry or something, punch THE wall, not MY feelings. The recent updated features in the accounts include listings of how many hits (how many people will drop by), so if I’m not getting enough feedback, I may take this story offline.

In the meantime, I’ll drop the chat, and cut to the story. ;) Please enjoy.

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I remember a night when I sat on top of my futon staring out the open window. My gaze had settled onto the luminescent moon in the dark blue sky. In my mind, I always thought that the moon was always smiling so I smiled back from where it peeked at me from above the rooftops outside.

In my palm, I had a cup of lukewarm tea. Though I was accustomed to it, I hated hot tea even in the winter. So my habit was to roll my cup in my palms until I decided it was cool enough to drink. I had done this since before I could remember.

That night, I had thought absent-mindedly about my past. How did I get to the place I was now? Why did things go the way they went when I was six? What made me become what I had become?

My past and present… How I became a geisha.

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“Chihiro-chan!”

My head snapped up from where it had drooped. I had been concentrated on making a flower necklace. As soon as I saw who had called me, I scrambled to my feet and began to run towards the voice that had called my name, “Rumi!”

Plunk. I fell flat on my face and stayed that way for a moment. I’ll wager that I’d never lived a day without being scolded for being clumsy. I pulled my face up from the ground and rubbed the dirt off my chin. It was only then that I realized I had broken my flower necklace.

“Oh no…”

The childish laugh stopped it’s tinkling as my best friend Rumi came to sit next to me, “You broke it?” She frowned a bit before adding sheepishly as she blamed herself for the accident, “Sorry about that Chi-chan.”

I shook my head and smiled, “Nope, it’s okay. I’ll just make another one like it.”

Rumi’s round rosy face frowned again before she lightened up. Taking my necklace into her hands, her fingers began to work diligently to repair what was left. Between the both of us, Rumi was the least clumsy and had a natural knack in her hand for fixing things.

I watched as Rumi spent the next few moments repairing what I had snapped when I tripped. She broke a stem here or there so she ended up fixing my once necklace into a bracelet that was a little too small for the wrist. Eventually, she kept trying to fix it that what was once a bracelet, became two small rings which we kept one each.

I beamed. That was another thing about her. She wanted to fix anything so much that it ended up looking nothing like what it had originally been. But that’s one of the reasons why she was my best friend. She tried really hard to bright people’s days so much. And many of the times, they ended up being happy just because her intentions were always pure.

But it was just then, at that unfortunate time, for some of the other village kids to join us at the river’s edge. I remember it all so clearly.

“Hey blue-eyes! Did your only friend decide to make you some tasty mud pies?”

There were probably about seven of them there that day, now that I recall. Some people back at the village were very superstitious. You see, I didn’t have blue-eyes, I had gray ones. I don’t know why, I was just born that way. But when the sun was upon me in our sunny little village, my gray eyes would take on a color that looked closest to blue.

No one knew what to call it, but many of the elders thought that it was because I had too much water in my being. Something about an unbalance, but I never thought too much about it. I felt normal enough.

Now, most of the villagers didn’t. You can probably see why I was made fun of just because my eye color was a weaker shade than the rich brown that was considered normal among the villagers. Pardon, I meant regular villagers.

I’ll even say my parents felt a little embarrassed about me, but I was sure they loved me anyway at the time. And of course, there was Rumi-chan. She never cared. We had the same habits and did almost the same in everything. We were the same age too, but she was a little taller so she said she was older. Still, we loved many of the same things like swimming in the river together on the fairer days of summer. Height or any other tiny difference made no difference to us.

I once asked her why she never wanted to play with the other kids. She told me, “Because you’re Chihiro and we said we’ll always be sisters, right?” I asked why she would still play with me if the other kids would make fun of her too. She only gave me a dull look as if I should already know before she would say, “I said so before. We’re sisters. One day, they will see how nice and pretty you are too.” Then she would laugh and so would I until we’d continue whatever we would be doing.

I kept Rumi’s words in my heart, but things didn’t seem like they would change anytime soon. The kids started throwing small stones and sticks at us and making faces at us when we got up to walk away.

“Blue-eyes! Why won’t you look at us?”

“Stupid! She’s probably blind!”

“Yeah, she always trips like she’s a blind!”

“Maybe she even likes the taste of grime on her tongue! Stupid!”

“Hahahaha!”

Rumi had a short temper many of the times and this was one of those times when it had sparked.

“You’re the ones who are idiots! Kuro-pi you stupid, stupid boy! Maybe eating your boogers made you think of grime!”

I had learned to keep my mouth shut, but Rumi was too angry to keep hers. She had taken my hand in her own as she marched back to those other children, dragging me with her. She stood eye-to-eye with the boy, Kuro. He was almost like the leader of my tormentors. His father and grandparents were the most superstitious of all it seemed, so I couldn’t really blame him for hating me.

Especially when the storms brewed and our crops would fail for a while, or Rumi’s and my beloved river would over flow during a flood. Once, the river came ashore so bad, that some of the villagers on the lower banks of our settlement had drowned or had been washed away. A ritual was soon held at our little shrine to plead for the spirits within or around the river to protect us or leave us in peace instead.

Kuro’s family lived down on the lowers banks and that one horrible flood that I remembered and had taken his mother’s life. I knew what they thought. I knew almost everyone thought so too. People would believe it was my doing. I guess they wanted to point a finger and that finger always pointed at me.

My eyes were downcast as Rumi continued to argue on my behalf against the group of kids. I was a bit scared to know what would happen so I started to tug on Rumi’s hand. I spoke softly to her, telling her that it was okay and that we should just go.

“Just go? I’m not letting Kuro-no-busu off the hook! He even said I had girly baby fat!”

I looked into her dark brown eyes and knew instantly that she was indeed offended by Kuro’s snide comment. My insistence to let things go did not seem to be rubbing off on her right then. I just shook my head and tried to pull her away again.

But she didn’t heed me as she turned right around, so quickly that her hand slipped from mine. Before I could stop her, she had punched Kuro’s face so that it left an ugly mark. Soon, all the kids gathered around her and started to beat her up.

I became so angry that I started to cry. I ran in to grab Rumi so we could get away as fast as we could. But I was scrawny and small compared to everyone that I was soon taken away by the hair as I reached blindly for my sister.

I screamed as Kuro continued to yank on my hair. He was a good head taller than me so I couldn’t reach his hand as I tried to pull my hair away from him. By then, all the other kids had gathered around him and me as I clawed at him.

From the corner of my eye I saw Rumi looking terrified. But she could do nothing for I saw her ankle’s nasty swell as she tried to crawl towards us. She was yelling something, but I couldn’t hear or tell whom she was yelling at.

I could barely hear anything that anybody said except to realize that some of the kids had grabbed me by the arms and legs, and Kuro, by my hair. I couldn’t lash out and I began to scream uncontrollably. I felt the cold splash of water soak through my clothes onto my back as it swallowed up my body.

My fear made the cold summer water turn as icy as if it were winter. My heart was trembling as I was dragged further and further into the pooling currents. I thought I was going to die. The kids all started to chant, saying all sorts of nasty things to me. I still remember someone saying, “Since blue-eyes has got so much water in her, perhaps she can breathe in it!”

That was it. I felt Kuro force my head into the water along with the rest of my body. Everyone struggled to keep me still as I kicked and thrashed. I heard their triumphant laughter get muffled by the cold water. The more I cried, the more water I swallowed and the more I tried to stop, the more my hiccups came and choked me.

I squeezed my eyes shut before my body began to relax. There was no air for me to breathe and there was too much water to really think straight. I felt so heavy that I was sinking. Even the slow current water began to take me as I sunk.

That was when I remembered that things went very still and quiet. The chirldren’s grubby hands let go of me, even Kuro’s leaving me adrift. I was still submerged as I was swept away. It felt as if I were flying in the water.

I felt nothing at first before I realized I would die. I took in a small breath.

But I was breathing. I was breathing underwater!

My eyes snapped open as I stared. At first, I couldn’t tell if I was looking up or down, but I soon realized that the water was very deep and someone was holding me in their arms.

Our heads broke the surface as I began to shudder and gasp from the cold. But the person who held me was calm as whomever it was, only held me closer. He was utterly calm and collected, like he was a part of the river itself.

I was tired and my body still hurt from all the stress it took on from what seemed like not too long ago. I still couldn’t keep myself from quivering in the stranger’s warm arms as I tried to calm myself, though I still feared for my life.

My eyes were closed for they felt too heavy to keep open and my ears strained to regain my sudden loss of hearing. It was then that I heard the sloshing sounds of scampering bodies, running for the bank.

When we reached a stop, there was a silence before I heard Rumi’s worried yells that sound like my name. That’s all I could think of before the stranger began to speak. His voice rumbled softly, similar like the purr of a cat. It was smooth and carried a soft lilt like some sort of surreal note. But it was angry-sounding right now, it even made me scared.

I couldn’t quite focus yet as I tried to understand what was going on. In my mind, I was still thinking, ‘I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die’ and my body was still tensed as if ready to fight again if I had to, though I no longer shook as horribly as before.

Suddenly, the running of feet told me that the kids had fled and weren’t going to come back. I thought of Rumi again and opened my eyes and looked for her. I was relieved that she was still there, but I saw her staring, her round little face looking a bit scared.

Then I saw how far my body was from the ground so I turned to grab for something indistinctively. I grabbed a fold of smooth, but very dry, fabric. I was stunned for a moment, before I looked up to see a smooth jaw line and dark hair with noticeable tints of green.

He looked down to see me staring at him. I didn’t know what to make of him. I had never seen someone like him before. I had never seen anyone like him before. If people thought my gray eyes were strange, his summer-green ones were even more stunning.

I’d never seen a white and blue outfit like his (though I later learned that it looked like the style that men wore in the Heian period). Even the men, who were rich enough to afford good robes in the village, had nothing as peculiar. But his eyes were still what caught my attention the most. Like all of us, his eyes were almond-shaped, but like me, our eye-colors were so different than the almond-color expected.

That’s what we did for a while. We just stared into each other’s eyes, before I had to look away when I remembered my manners.

Suddenly, the sound of Rumi struggling made me turn my head quickly to the side to see her on her knees. She was just as confused as I was and her eyes were looking between the strange man and me.

I began to squirm a bit as I struggled towards my friend, “Rumi-chan!”

The man set me down cautiously as I stumbled a bit as I ran towards her before collapsing in her arms, careful to avoid her injured ankle. She just held onto me tightly as I tightly as I was clinging to her. Then she started to cry saying that she was dumb and that all the other kids were even dumber.

We sat there holding each other like our lives depended on it. I began to feel better. I was not going to die. Thinking about what happened still shook me and I held on tighter to my sister before I too began to break down into restrained sobs. I couldn’t believe I was sitting with Rumi and not floating miles away from her by now.

When we were able to let go of each other again, we turned our heads to look for the mysterious man. Only to see that…

He was gone.

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A/N: I’ll be evil if I have to. ;D

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