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ran-orimoto · 3 months

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The naughty ponentino

[ Italy miraculously scored at the 97th minute, I published a new Junzumi one-shot after MONTHS of struggling at uni and, consequently, in writing as well. Tbh I didn’t feel that fine in the first part of the year and my self-esteem paid the consequences of the tour down the hill my uni life took for months. You know, you go badly at uni, you will be attacked by parents and relatives everyday, you will get poisoned by all the mean things you hear and you will lose your self. But I’m healing, guys, slowly but I am. Junzumi and my trash about them has been giving me a great boost in recovering a part of my confidence. So…Enjoy this long story, fruit of my STRUGGLE, also because, like I said on AO3, this has been a writing struggle fr real. The amount of drafts I wrote before coming to a decent result could fill a sea!]

Context: This is set during the infamous roman trip Izumi intends to drag everyone in, after having turned Junpei’s suggestion upside down. It’s the last day of leisure in Rome and Fate tricks Izumi again. ]

• Il ponentino malandrino •

“Izumi-Chan? Izumi-Chan, are you sleeping?

…

She had decided to follow the wind in a place where it could have never entered. And yet, that was what had happened: it had managed to slip in a crack of the entrance, had chased her with the trails of its gusts, had sat by her side just to whisper words she, as only human on Earth, only creature in the universe, eventually interpreted and understood…Clearly. Then, after it had succeeded in distracting her from something she wasn’t minimally interested in, it had left, diving into a river turgid of notes and quickly swimming upstream.

Every wind had its own personality, she had learnt as time had passed by. There were sweet breezes that would punctually help her fall asleep, if she chose to leave the window opened at night: chilly and able to spread goosebumps on her skin at their first touch, but provoking those while giving her motherly kisses to reassure her, make her relax, calm the tornado whirling in her chest down. Sometimes, on a break from her photoshoot sessions, she would receive visits from an adventurous scirocco telling her about those seas and shores over which it had passed-by on its warm wings; those exotic corners owning sands shimmering like minuscule, precious stars stranded on our planet. At other times an irritated mistral would come to vent, seek comfort from its favourite shoulder, a bit shy at first, hiding below her curtain of wheat threads but ending up throwing them in the air, one after one, not having managed to control its anger.

And lastly, there was the naughty roman ponentino from her childhood memories, the place she believed it had sneaked in to fool her, to abandon her right at the moment she needed its support the most.

Confused, speechless, shocked…Thunderstruck.

Che cosa ho fatto?! Che cosa ho fatto?!

After having been hit by a lightning, a tree will stand still below the tension of the sky, peeved, until the creaking noises coming from inside its trunk and corroding its fibers force it to curve on a side and make it collapse on the hard ground.

What in the world have I done?!

Izumi petrified as well, but as soon as she felt her back rocking back and forth on its own, she tore up the roots her feet had anchored her to the floor with and tried waving her limbs. They felt weird, numb, like if she had stayed in the same position for an eternity, a tingling sensation reminding her of those little pops fireworks will leave after having exploded in the firmament.

Fortunately, she didn’t need them at the moment. Indeed, she wished for them to remain in that useless state until that spectacle, whatever it was supposed to be technically called, ended. She shouldn’t move, not even breath. Any minimal shift, even the uncontrollable ones of her chest, might lead her to unpleasant consequences, danger. If her palm had perched on her large grimace, concealing its guilt but leaving a small edge exposed, there would it have to stay; if her knees were pressing against each other, they would have to keep on doing that until time began flowing in the whole Teatro dell’Opera again, no matter if bones crackling against each other were one of the most repulsive feelings ever, in her opinion; if her other hand had landed on her skirt, pinching not only its tissue but also the flesh of her thighs, it would have to freeze in that painful nervousness until it was given a signal of stop.

In a nutshell, she would have to totally turn into a pillar of salt, one which, -who knew, she fantasized with shame-, could be disintegrated by that ponentino of her boots, if it came back to assist to the great finale of the orchestra’s performance.

Only her eyes were allowed to swing as much as they pleased, on alert, high allert just like they were supposed to be, occasionally venturing in the meanders of an artificial night to find a stout silhouette slightly leaning forward, round shapes of elbows puffing up on the marble of a sill.

Motionless, engrossed in the frantic escaping of the violins, the relentless rush of their bows, the terror of the chords being urged to keep on running, never looking back at the cumulonimbus advancing behind them.

As if nothing had ever happened.

Izumi’s mouth opened in surprise and she felt her figure disobeying to her steel orders at once, coming back to life, straightening, fully turning in that direction, in his direction, so she could take a better look at him and boggle. So much effort thrown away in the immediacy of a reaction that had skillfully evaded the supervision of her legendary, -beh, in the past it used to be, before that day-, control.

Suddenly, at that sight of utter nothingness welcoming her, she felt disgruntled. Her orbs got squeezed by a very accentuated frown that descended on their contours and unloaded all the weight of its annoyance on them. As paradoxically as it might sound, it was easier to believe some merciful entity, -Fairymon, might it be you?-, had landed on the big clock above the stage and had put a whole minute back on it.

It was easier, much easier to sell that lie herself than believing Junpei hadn’t noticed.

How could she, especially if she recalled all those recollections of hers featuring him listing a series of details about her, which not even she had ever acknowledged to own before? Special fragments of hers only he could grasp, such as swabs of impalpable colour that would bounce behind her, whenever she tossed her gilded strands down her back with an elegant movement of her palm. She had glared at him back then, had also been on the verge of slapping him: to be honest with herself, he had really begun spitting the biggest idiocies, since she had revealed about the motley filter enhancing her surroundings, her days, wherever she might go.

It is…Just impossible, She gave another suspicious glance at him, an eyebrow getting stuck in its arched form as she reluctantly returned to her right, to that column and the elegant bollard attached on it, the only source of frail light she could reach out to in the hope of clearing her mind. As soon as she let the dim halo of its ray embrace her, she felt like punching herself. Actually, it finally dawned on her that was what she had been looking for. That was the chance she had been praying for, the solution to her problems, so there was no reason to feel so upset, so dissatisfied; there was no reason for that pout she had worn without even realizing to exist.

Accepting it was true he hadn’t noticed, he hadn’t felt anything implied she could pretend she had never done that as well. After all, nobody had seen her doing what she had in the thick darkness, there was no one who had witnessed her mistake, there was no camera that had taped that instant. In conclusion, there was no proof of that, except those obnoxious electric ants still crawling on her skin -but they would go away sooner or later, wouldn’t they?- and her still fresh memories making her toes curl at their continuous circling, -but even when it came to them, someday they would turn into nothing more than the remnant of a hallucinated lucid dream, wasn’t that so?-.

Instead of smiling at that idea, though, she clenched her jaw while ruminating about that possibility, afraid of taking that step forward despite being aware it would free herself from so many unnecessary concerns and pains.

Where are you? Why did you escape?

Where had the wind gone? Where? She wasn’t used to filling her head with so many doubts. She didn’t like thinking and getting lost in the maze of her questions, without a guide leading her from up above.

…

“Izumi-Chan? Izumi-Chan are you sleeping…?” Who knew for how long she had been running in that imaginary garden with no destination, if he ended up asking her that. “Izumi…Izumi-Chan? Are you?” In the thick shadow of a theatre box, Junpei’s voice, the chirping of a well-fed robin begging for more crumbs from the railing of a balcony, sounded like being hopping in her ears like the sticks thumping a drum.

“Do you happen to often ask a sleeping person if they are sleeping?” Having got further from the bronzy glow with a hop of her backside, she couldn’t make out where he exactly was, how closer he had got to her, but there definitely was something quite large hovering near to her nose. It was performing slow rotations and pulling away whenever it accidentally grazed the waves of her ruffled hair, as if it could sense the imperceptible shivers running on her bare shoulders.

“Uhm, now that you ask me, I would get pretty angry if someone did that to me. I don’t know what I would do if you happened to be that person, though, Izumi-Chan,” She didn’t feel like adding a word to that externalization of disarming naivety, so she limited herself to internally sigh while continuing listening to his clumsy blabbing, to those sections of its’ he was muttering more to himself than her in a very silly monologue. What in the world was he talking about? He was the only one knowing that! “I would open my eyes and think I’m dead or something because an angel has woken me up, ah ah. Or a mermaid! Because Izumi-Chan’s voice sounds like a beautiful song even when she’s just speaking, ah…”

“Junpei…!” Her tongue suspended in incredulity, she searched for a part of his body she could pat on to fish him out from that swirl he had been trapped in. In the span of less than five seconds, he had dragged her to such levels of exasperation his name had come out from her mouth way too loudly. Predictably, to her utter shame, some old man blending in the indefinition of their surroundings punctually sent her a very bothered warning through a long hiss.

“Eh, someone is in urgent need of a chamomile,” Junpei commented with a snort, unaware her fingers were floating some millimeters distant from his arm. How many other times would he be fooled by those jokes the blackness had been pulling at him?

“Oh…Look at what you have done!” A laughter bursted in her vacillating conscience confirmed that she wasn’t going to aim her gaze at that direction ever again. “It was already embarrassing enough to hear you asking me if I was sleeping!”

“I didn’t want to embarrass you, I’m sorry, Izumi-Chan,” She could picture him shaking his head at an increasing pace, his lips probably protruded in a childish mortification. “But, you see, I was worried you had fallen asleep because it would have meant you had got bored.”

And she had to confess he wasn’t that wrong. It was the first time she had gone to the theatre and…Well, she wasn’t really enjoying it that much, if she had to be sincere with herself. To someone like her not being able to stay at a desk and focus for more than thirty minutes, without fiddling with, -for example- ,the zip of her pencil case or making her feet stomp on each other or, again, just contemplating the poetic scenario out of the window, that was resulting to be a struggle. Having to sit on a chair with no support surface in the vicinity was making her feel so restless, making her want to stand up and give kicks in the air. Yet, what was even more tedious about the situation than that that there was…Nothing in front of her. Just people in soulless elegant clothes playing instruments and repeating the same actions over and over again; people whose appearance wasn’t even that distinct, as Junpei hadn’t only got a back luck not finding opera tickets, but he also had had to settle for a theatre box confined to the extreme right of the large area, isolated in his misfortune from the rest of the audience.

Chissà, Like a flyer fluttering through the roads of a big city after having avoided to be torn by a darting car, a cautious hypothesis got thrown out from the incessant, vicious tornado that had generated in her stomach. Her curiosity was quick to pick it up and eagerly read its daring content, even quicker to mold her wince of resigned perplexity in a sly smirk. Maybe I did that out of boredom…

Only when other freed leaflets began crowding her mental space, polluting it with paper scribbled with baubles, rubbish, did she remember she had a bizarre conversation to keep going. Her interlocutor had been in standby mode for a considerable while, but he predictably reanimated without complaints or silly exclamations, -more fitting for him!-, as soon as her attention shifted on him again. He could have waited for a reply, a sign of life from her for hours and hours, for all she knew.

“Why would you get that worried about it? There’s no need.”

“There is, instead. I am the one who invited you to come here.”

“More like you convinced me with a magical trick,” She felt so stupid while attempting to mimic the skilled oscillating of his index, vividly viewing it in her fresh memories from back when they were in the foyer. He had showed, indeed, had put his ticket on display, like if it was a precious possession, a new member of his collection of accumulating bits and pieces.

…

More or less, an hour before

That nagging silver tongue of hers ,which had previously pestered him with so many futile platitudes, was refusing to collaborate with her: it had holed up at the door of her throat, inert, obstructing the passage of her voice, of whatever she could say to fill that silence of hers.

“Junpei…”

She just believed it wasn’t fair he had to be the one always getting let down by events he couldn’t control. If it had been oddly refreshing to have been the one having bad luck for once, having had to wave farewell to her afternoon of leisure, it would have been even more than that if she had been the only misfortunate one for once. She would have been laughing about it all, instead of being taciturnly staring at the young man in front of her who was pretending not to be caring in the least, reading the content of a booklet out loud in an unlistenable italian. He could annoy her even in such an unpleasant circumstance!

“Let’s see…Anutonio Vui…Varudi. Vi…Vardi?”

“I-It’s Antonio Vivaldi,” She managed to formulate a coherent sentence only when she spotted a man holding a broom, a couple of elders sitting on a sofa, the receptionist behind her desk, all those people who had been minding their business in the foyer suddenly stopping what they were doing to look at them. Everyone, no one excluded. She could feel their curious, malicious eyes checking them out from any direction, all the attention of the Teatro dell’Opera on them as if they were a pair standing on a stage, below the spotlight. That was even worse than the moment their plane had landed in Rome and he had started singing a Nel blu dipinto di blu at the top of his lungs. Every passenger, -again, everyone! She had turned to give a glance at the the rows of seats behind them!- had begun commenting about the scene with mean-spirited observations, obviously pointing not only at him, but also at the distressed girl by his side who had eventually been affected by that euphoria because of…A weak immune system?

“Didn’t you say you are a fan of classical music as well? It doesn’t seem so.”

“I really do, Izumi-Chan, but I play piano, not violin.”

Nonplussed, she analyzed that genuine smile extending from a side to the other of his face, those glimmers of joy sparkling in his irises like honey on a little spoon. He had just heard that his last chance to watch an opera spectacle in Italy had gone up in smoke, that there were no tickets left and he was acting like that? She was aware each person’s reactions to disappointments weren’t the same, but he wasn’t looking disappointed in the least. That wasn’t possible, that was just…Inhuman.

“Izumi-Chan…?”

“Has anyone ever told you it’s okay to make a scene, mope, yel-,” She cut herself short with composure, changing the trajectory of her speech by slowing down with a single toe on the brakes. Words were supposed to be pondered while talking to him! “No, yelling is absolutely not okay, especially to someone like you. But you get what I mean, don’t you? I know you were truly looking forward to watching…What was his name? Rossini? It’s understandable you are feeling sad. I would too, so there’s no reason to pretend you are not.”

“Well, I did care about watching that spectacle, but things have gone the way they have. There’s nothing to do about it,” He shrugged, imperturbable, readily tweeting that nonchalant answer without a moment’s hesitation. That swiftness and undeniable frankness made her jaw softening its clench. Then, however, Junpei began growing stiffer, uptight, abruptly averting his gaze and puckering his lips as if he wanted to whistle. His irises flew away to nestle in some hidden tunnel in the ceiling, whereas hers swooped onto her top, their eyelids feeling hot and humid as she blinked over and over again to discern the outline of a pair of slopes, of their borders trimmed with lace.

She had picked the best outfit for a stroll in the old town, had turned her trolley upside down to test every possible combination of styles and palettes in front of the mirror. When the crew had seen her stepping in the hall of the hotel, enwrapped in a dress woven with the white of serene clouds, the boys had awed at the simplicity of her elegance. Overcome an initial phase of astonishment, of gulps that were more audible than his struggling attempts to say something, mumble a few words, Junpei had rambled about how she resembled a refined main heroine from those old black and white movies set in Rome.

She hadn’t been able to react the way she had intended to, taken aback by his lingering stupor, by all those hints making her understand he truly believed she was as graceful as an actress picked by Fellini and there was no one who could ever deny that.

Thus, the more she had echoed that bold comparison in her mind, the more she had found herself liking it, getting into character for fun and making the others exchange baffled glances. The preview of the incoming scenes had looked fascinating. On curtains appearing from nowhere and rolling down the sky to obscure the blinding Sun, she had marvelled at frames of her sitting before the Trevi Fountain, teasing its ripples along with the wind by wiggling her fingers just above them, gasping at its foam’s fog moistening the folds of her skirt.

In the end, in her reality, everything she had on, from her straw hat to her sandals, from the twine of the row of buttons, which broke the monotony of the whinteness, to the empty gap between her loosened belt and her flat belly had got wet, indeed, soaked under a petty summer shower.

Her life could be considered as a film just like Junpei had underlined, but he had evidently made a mistake about its genre: she wasn’t that sure about which it might be, though. In which kind of movie would the main character stand in front of a best friend of hers’, blushing furiously, embracing her chest with a protective gesture, despite having ascertained the worst hadn’t happened and he apparently wasn’t avoiding her spheres because of a matter of decency ? In a cheap one without any doubt, the cheapest ever shot in decades.

“May I ask what in the world you are thinking about so intensely? Allora?”

She didn’t expect him to go back to her so fast. Those thoughts of his he seemed to have no intention to reveal must have got to the roof at that point. Nevertheless, bolts aren’t supposed to return to the roaring expanse they have been hurled from. When they had deluded themselves the sky looked so near it might welcome them back thanks to a prodigy, they had been sent back to the ground, forced to discharge their thrilling, devastating energies on whatever or whoever they had happened to strike. There was no possibility to transgress Mother Nature law’s commandments.

“Uh, about a bit of this and that,” Evasive at first, seemingly confident he could escape from her by making his pupils tiptoe away, he was ambushed by a belligerent blast of ponentino abruptly barging in. It opened both the doors of the entrance with a rough slap and caught him in its implacable current, effortlessly sweeping his spirit, as resistant as a boulder just like he was, back where it was supposed to be. The temporizing Junpei had no choice but to surrender. He had to speak. “I was telling myself that if there is nothing to do about it, it means I will play along with it.”

The Moon of his Cheshire cat grin rose and reflected its mystery over the agitated waves of a green sea. That time it dropped an object that was as light as a feather and trusted those crystalline depths with its extreme fragility.

Once face to face with a very familiar building and its even more familiar porch, Izumi couldn’t keep herself from grabbing, or better, trying grabbing the ticket. Actually, showing to own rather snappy reflexes, Junpei’s palm promptly pulled away from her sight to make her grip grasp at nothing else but thin air.

“Ah, ah, ah, if you touch it, you will spoil everything,” He shook his index in comical disapproval, making her clasp her hands in delight at the realization of what she was assisting to: in spite of that sibylline admonition, the haughtiness suddenly enveloping him, evoked by a pose holding a bizarre kind of sloppy grace only someone like him could emanate, his emphasized tone reminding her of a narrator telling children about a scary wolf eating people in one bite were just unmistakable. “You mustn’t do that, eh eh,” And add those naughty chuckles to the picture too, because he was a particular amateur magician laughing about his tricks even more than his audience usually would.

“Ok, then. What do you want me to do?” Just like when they were kids, it took not even a second for her to get excited about what he had in store, feeling like clapping in merry anticipation and almost forgetting she was in a place swarming with strangers.

That time it seemed Junpei would need her full concentration. He didn’t really give her any explanation about what he wanted her to do, but she could guess the whole magic was going to revolve around that ticket. There was no card she would have to pick from a deck, no meaningless ritual formula at whose rhythm their tongue would have to dance at the unison. Only that ticket, wrinkled because of his fidgeting and sweat. Why was he so nervous? He should have known she wouldn’t be disrespectful in his regards, if the result of his spell wouldn’t be what he was desiring it to be like, if that poor, crumpled ticket remained there and, -who knew what he was planning!-, didn’t get replaced by some flower and its lilac petals.

Obviously, they would be lilac: after seven birthdays united by the memory of lovely boxes adorned with huge lillac ribbons and presents manufactured by him, each of them being painted with the hues of early dawns, she could recognize he knew what her favourite colour was.

Though he hadn’t told her to do so, she spontaneously closed her eyes and breathed in a sweet scent only she could smell, because carried by gusts blowing from the far land of a dream.

Meanwhile, too focused on his immense feat, Junpei made the ticket swing from right to left and viceversa at an increasing speed, movement those trembles provoking spasms even in the core of his chest didn’t luckily hinder.

“Ok…Now you see a ticket,” She heard him chanting in a way too theatrical fashion, but his intonation, along with those consecutive stresses hopping from a syllable to the other, soon grew persuasive enough to build a crescendo of hype in her body and soul, a tenuous formication marching on her whole frame with muffled steps, as if she was made of snow. “But nothing is what it seems. If I make the ticket come here and go there, come back here and return there, you will get to see what your eyes couldn’t until now. And…Sorupuresa!”

Sorpresa.

She wasn’t disappointed not to have been greeted by a violet at her awakening, but she didn’t react at what Junpei had called surprise in his butchered italian with one of her, Commozione!

“Eh, eh,” Junpei wasn’t either. Indeed, he had apparently predicted the failure of his special effects and the final result, putting on the mask of an imperturbable jester to try covering his awkwardness in vain. “Surprise, uh? Surprise might not be the right term to use. It’s not like you are into this stuff.”

Unbeknownst to him, to those bleak fantasies his negativity was burdening his cheerfulness with, Izumi had just been left lost for words. She fairly gave him the wrong impression she was vexed with him, so repulsed by his game, terribly pensive, but ,actually, she wasn’t thinking about anything substantial because her brain had turned a blank sheet, a tabula rasa. Therefore, she limited herself to gingerly reach out again, this time being allowed to touch the ticket, or better, that second ticket which had materialized from nowhere, and free it from the weight of Junpei’s thumb.

It was a copy of the first one, its twin. They were identical with the same title in bold , the same photo of the outside of the theatre, the same scarlet background reminding her of a red carpet, the same frame edged with golden which gave them an aura of unexplainable, sophisticated preciousness, -no matter the miserable state of Junpei’s-.

It was so obvious.

“You bought another ticket for me.”

…

Still, for some reason, her statement had sounded more like a question, confused and diffident, ellipsis opening a window to let her discover what else the wind and the leaves ,with no destination just like her spirit, wanted to tell her.

“I wonder what I would have done, if I had messed that up again”.

She landed back into her present with a thump. The recollection of those loquacious gusts she hadn’t got to listen to mixed with a rumble she couldn’t understand where it might come from at the beginning, disrupting the carefreeness of a Carnival of pink and azure but never physically showing up to crash the party. The thunderstorm was as chatty as them. It wanted to talk to her and it had a lot to say too, though she wasn’t used to its booming, to translating its roar into a human language without having to ask it to repeat it.

“Uh?”

“My magical trick. I’m glad you liked it because it has been the first time I have succeeded. At home I tried with some pens. Maybe it was too long as an object to practice with and that was why the duplication never worked as it should.”

In a strong dejà-vú, in the vice of some kind of cursed time loop, she abruptly shook herself out of her physical and mental torpor with an involuntary twitch of her fingers, paper rounded edges peeling against their tips. After having attempted to reproduce that hectic sway, determined to find out what was the ingenious mockery behind that stunning enchantment, -How? How had he managed to do that?!-, her ticket had wilted, had grown soggy like a biscuit dipped in milk, its side eaten by her sticky touch.

“But oh! Wait! Why would I say something so embarrassing in front of Izumi-Chan?! Ah…! I-I hope you liked it, Izumi-Chan…”

“Shhh, Junpei! Perfavore !” She would have added so much more to that sibilant scolding just to ignore and suppress another unmistakable guttural hiss slithering towards them, making its way avoiding the low yet heavier musical phrases. Anything not to begin feeling like shrinking in her chair, not to die of embarrassment. Ehm, it was more appropriate to call it second-hand embarrassment! Because she wasn’t the one who had been bothering that man with her incapacity to adjust the volume of her voice!-.

“I’m so sorry, Izumi-Chan! I did it again.”

If only there had been more light; if only she could have found his face as easily as she had…A while before: she would have seriously stuck a whole fist in his mouth! In the absence of valid alternatives that could give her such a sense of satisfaction, she had to settle for squeezing that unlucky ticket as hard as she could, frozen in the expectation for a debacle of historic proportions, a heated discussion in the middle of a violin concerto.

But, needless to specify, the fire never broke out, no door ever opened behind them, either. The old man obviously, -and fortunately-, mattered more about listening to the melody of a melancholy winter than wasting that cathartic experience arguing with two foreigner who had no respect for the miracle music was to human life. Most likely, he had cooled his anger with a huff, had glared at her, - so he believed he had, at least-, for a last time and had faded in the inscrutability of the blackness once more. Izumi didn’t calculate how long she had been sitting still, but when her body began complaining about that unnatural immobility, she melted that general tightness right away. Unless the man was struggling to take off one of his shoes without being able to see where he was exactly putting his hands, she could sigh out of relief, certain her reputation would be safe and sound.

Look at what kind of trouble I will get into because of you!

She had survived to the storm. Again. Still, may that be the last time it happened!

“That man should know better. It’s rude to tell a woman to shut up,” And speaking of which, Junpei’s indignant grunt and the rustling of what clearly sounded like shirt sleeves being rolled up sturdy arms were surely going to bode ill. Her resolution to cherish that fluke by not throwing it away in the span of a single second like that was so impetuous, as much as a hurricane, the impact against his shoulder and something else he instantly snatched away occurred without her having to grope in the dark.

“Now, now, where were we? Ah right, the magical trick,” She was pushed downwards along with the sagging of his muscles. A hint of tension, however, still lingered within them. She could sense it under her palm, a rigidity that was in stark contrast with the softness of the area, closer to the inflexibility of bones than the malleability of flesh. So precisely, carefully in detail. It almost felt like she could describe that feeling because it was changing her own body to the core; because it was more hers than his. Perhaps, it felt both simultaneously due to those pins and needles irradiating from him to her. Again. Right when they had finally started vanishing like she wanted them to! “Well, to be honest with you, I would like it better ,if you explained me how you did that.”

“That wouldn’t be fair, Izumi-Chan. A magician never reveals his greatest tricks. He’s just like a chef never divulging his secret recipe.”

“This isn’t fair, either!” It dawned on her Junpei had never turned down a request of hers until that evening. Once, even more incorrigible than usual, exploiting the fact they had remained all alone to rattle on an avalanche of pointless stuff, he had stammered he would give her the Moon as present, if it was possible, because he could tell how intriguing and marvelous it was to her. If she still had Fairymon’s wings she would set off for the night firmament, he was so right. Back then, she had just given him a nudge right into his stomach and had walked past him, unable to find a worthy continuation to his foolishness, feeling so…Small, minuscule just like she would before the magnificence of a full Moon, totally unsuitable as object of that overbloated admiration.

And yet, he couldn’t give her that, couldn’t whisper in her ear where that ticket had been hiding before coming out in the open. How stupid was he! And how stupid was she too, following that train of thoughts without refusing to. She got the confirmation in a place where sight was mostly useless, her other sensorial perceptions seemed to have really been boosted, especially the ones tied to her conscience’s roaming.

His chirping could ring in her ears differently as well, like the vibration of a robust cello wanting to weave stories about an endless spring retaining hints of wintry reticence here and there.

“But ,you know, if I wanted to I wouldn’t be able to give you an exhaustive answer. I really don’t know how I managed to make it. It’s not like I don’t remember, I just don’t know what I did that was so different from before! My hand went here, then there, I followed the script like always and, puff! The tickets were two and I was as baffled as you looked”.

“I-I wasn’t expecting you would give me a ticket,” She admitted with faint awkwardness, obviously omitting -it goes without saying-, the unnecessary detail of the flower. While she was absently rolling some ruffled locks, that sticker left on the tall pile of her thoughts was whirling like them and progressively losing its petals one after the other, new butterflies surfing on the waves of the wind; of the galloping ones of the ponentino.

Suddenly, there was a shift.

To the audience of the theatre it was the one of the clock hands, their overlapping on a glowing number announced by an imperceptible clicking sound; the cessation of the music represented by the gentle thud of the first violin in the crook of a velvet arm; the unearthly silence. To her, instead, it was that mischievous blowing and the goosebumps it brought along, thar bouncing brush of her hair against her skin, that whiff of laughters tickling her lobes.

And, again and again, Junpei’s ever-changing voice, distant, so distant, from the chanted poetry of the winds of the world, but still greatly appreciated by them. That was what was her orbs could see, the only beings standing out quite crisply in the last minute of the illusion of the night: lively puffs of air dancing around him like virtuous nymphs.

“I know you weren’t. I wasn’t as well, in a certain sense ah ah. I told you. Maybe, it was because you were there. Yeah! I didn’t make a fool of myself thanks to you. I’m sure of that,” Firstly his pitch got lower, much lower, almost making him sound like someone Izumi didn’t know, then, all of a sudden, completely surpassing an intermediate level, it shrank into the squeaking of some dog toy. Izumi’s teasing sarcasm and its arrogance risked to be crushed by that elevator.

“T-This might be the most original, nonsense excuse I have ever heard.”

“No, Izumi-Chan. I would never lie to you, it’s the truth. I just thought about you, about how I wanted to spend…Yeah, the conclusion of this holiday with you, because I had so much fun visiting the Colosseo in two, trying that special gelato from that cafè, tasting yours, letting you taste mine as well, chatting with you in the hall of the hotel before going to bed. I wanted more of that but I had given up, until you were caught in the storm and you seeked shelter below the porch. I thought it was sign of Fate! Now, though, I’m afraid I’ve been selfish... With you here, this has been better than any Rossini I might ever listen to, but it hasn’t been to you. You would have preferred going to the stadium with Takuya and Tomoki or to the museum with the twins. I-I-“

While he had gone through half of that week the crew had spent in Rome, she had let herself be taken back in time along with his gab. Dragged to all those memories, to all those chances to watch opera Junpei had thrown away to stay with her. The first late afternoon the group had split, that moment each of them had agreed about the impossibility to satisfy everyone’s interests and wishes, she had spotted Junpei carefully reading a poster attached to the glass of the bus shelter. Once he had heard her approaching him, he had turned to her and had asked her about where she intended to go. Like that, with a large grin, without further questions and second thoughts, he had tagged along with her, no matter where she had planned to head for. As long as he was with her, -he had said among sheepish chuckles-, he would be happy, words she had quietly made slip by with a shrug as she couldn’t see any harm in letting him come along, especially if she considered she would have been alone if he had had other plans. Junpei might be noisy and more often than rarely he would make her wish she could hide her head in sand like an ostrich would, but he could offer a nice company at the same time. A very enthusiastic one… She had no doubts those memories they, only they shared still felt alive in her heart because of that overemphasized excitement of his latched on them: his yells joining hers in their cacophony to cheer for Takuya at the stadium; the extinguishing fire of the Sun inflaming the ruins of the Colosseum and making his spheres shine so intensely as the rays bathing a summer day; the delicious taste of that long spoon filled with pistacchio e cioccolato he had made easily slide between her lips; all those conversations about this and that she could perfectly remember, the fresco of the bustling Rome in background looking more vibrant, a riot of colours, at her occasional glances.

She had been happy too, she had enjoyed herself as if she was a solitary drop of ponentino, mocking herself but also smiling at herself at her own motley trails guiding her decisions.

“There is a door behind us,” She breathed to Junpei who had got further from her to clap the violinist and the orchestra. “If I had got that bored, rest assured I would have used it.”

The night came to an end, but she took advantage of the lingering penumbra offered by the dangling red drapes. Hidden below them, blending in the thunderous applause of the entire theatre, she shortened the gap between them by getting closer and closer to him. Then, she leaned forward, stretched her neck and…She did it.

She placed her lips on his puffy cheek. Just a little peck on his soft skin. It lasted longer than the first as she was no longer scared by that electrostatic energy bursting in her whole body, without prior warning, darting through her veins and nevers to elicit every millimeter of her organism. Yet, it still was as fleeting as a butterfly perching on her favourite flower and taking off immediately afterwards, before someone could catch her.

Thus, she parted from him. And she noticed it, indeed, them.

“Izumi-Chan, what is it?” When the curtain closed, he raised an eyebrow at her, once more incredibly oblivious to what she had just done.

“Oh nothing, nothing…Non è…Niente.”

“What does it mean nothing?! You are-“!On impulse, he stood up making his chair fall backwards. Her giggles got even more uncontrollable as she saw him going back and forth, unable to make up his mind, understand if it was more important to tidy that mess or pay attention to her purple blush; or also grab her bag to hand it to her and rush to the door to open it for her-.

He eventually opted for the last choice, gasping at the sight of her reaching the knob before he could and dropping the chair on the spot. She was aware she would absolutely need to avoid to look at him as much as she could if she didn’t want to seriously upset him, so she had walked past him with the intention to get to the foyer before him, constantly making an effort to keep a…Holy distance.

Oh, poor Junpei.

“Ladies first!”

“Oh perfavore, now,” The way his exaggeratedly polite gesture made her eyes roll was fitting for her situation: diverting her gaze, bowing at him with a genuinely-flattered “grazie” pronounced with her orbs closed, ignoring his so content facial traits.

Everything was going smoothly until in the crowd, among the people thronging the corridors and the stair, a distinguished man holding a fedora hat against his chest arrested his march to frown at them. His mustache covering the accentuated curve of his strict wince, he gave them a long stare Junpei exchanged with equal animosity.

“Cosa c’è ?” He drily spat at that stranger he had seen an hour before in the foyer, waiting for the spectacle to start with statuesque composure.

Worried about what it might happen, Izumi tried pushing Junpei to a side despite already knowing well she stood no chance to make that bear Junpei was move not even a millimeter. She brainstormed about an improvised justification to frantically mutter to the intimidating man, but she soon found herself tripping against Junpei’s hip.

The man kept on focusing on Junpei, inspecting him from head to toe, dwelling on his face and then…

“Oh…Mio Dio,” His austerity falling like a tower of cards, to Junpei’s and Izumi’s confusion, he went away leaving behind exhilarating snickers. Junpei wasn’t fairly puzzled, though. He was flabbergasted and Izumi did expect he would ask her for explanations. He was a rather clever person, despite anything.

“Izumi-Chan, do I have something on my face?”

“What kind of something?”

“Something that makes people burst in laughters when they look at me, I guess,” She gave her best not to explode in an attack of giggles once more at him stepping closer. Insisting on asking her to tell him what was going on, he pulled his cheeks as if that would really help her check the area better and wouldn’t just make him resemble a glutton hamster.

“I…don’t see anything,” She was persevering too, but she might be a terrible actress, in truth, if he was analyzing her nonchalant expression so skeptically. It was so strange to acknowledge he could question her words sometimes. She was certain he wouldn’t believe she had done what she had without making him realize, even though just like what he had claimed about his magical trick, she didn’t know how that had been possible.

And I…Wonder…, She dared to venture in a legitimate doubt, repeatedly stumbling as she dug through it, getting bogged down as she strived to give it a complete and refined form, until her legs, no, she just gave up. She remained where she had landed, resigned yet content, relaxing in that sense of acceptance the calm breaths were caressing her heart with. Her own wind, her own spirit reassured her it was fine, and since she wasn’t sure what it was specifically talking about, she set it free. No need for further explanations about something whose identity and meaning was obscure.

For now, it really was fine.

“Hm, well, there is a mirror in the foyer. I will check in there.”

For now it really was, as long Junpei didn’t find out.

“Junpei-!” She panicked, her hands swooping in her bag to grab a bunch of handkerchiefs. In leaps, she chased his silhouette and dropper some of them in the process. She reached out in the direction of his cheek, pressing the tissue against it when she still hadn’t aligned her pace with his.

“Izumi-Chan, what are you doing?!” Though he didn’t push her back, he reasonably complained about her tentative rubbing plasming his chubby features like pottery.

“What have you eaten before coming here? You have got some cream here and here too.”

“W-Where? I didn’t eat anything sweet. I swear!”

…

Two lilac butterflies. There were two lilac butterflies on one of his cheeks. The pair of the first outstretched on the one of the second looked like the petals she had been daydreaming since she had stepped in that theatre.

She might not be the great actress he believed she could become, but she undoubtedly was a fantastic magician, as fantastic as him, with secrets she would never reveal.

Or so she thought, at least.

XXX

Italian notes:

•Ponentino: it is a wind typical of Lazio and Toscana, very frequent in Rome. It is considered as a naughty stronger breeze blowing over people in love to act as a matchmaker ahaha.

• Chissà: it’s a sort of “who knows”, very mischievous in some contexts.

• Antonio Vivaldi: Composer from Baroque age. The violìn concerto Izumi and Junpei are assisting to features Le Quattro Stagione (The four Seasons). The story starts when the orchestra is playing Estate, (Summer), which has got a movement echoing the dramatic dance of a thunderstorm.

• Nel blu dipinto di blu: It’s a song by Domenico Modugno, the VOLAREEEEE cementing a part of our identity as a country loving music.

• Gioacchino Rossini: One of three Belcanto opera composers along with Bellini and Donizetti. Rossini is a very particular genius of our lyrical panorama. His music is brilliant, witty, so funny, I can see Junpei enjoying it very much.

• Allora? : It’s a kind of “So?”

• Fellini: Federico Fellini was a film-maker, one of the most important in the whole world. Some of his masterpieces are La Strada, which we fondly remember along with its soundtrack composed by Nino Rota, 8½, and, dulcis in fundo, la Dolce Vita to which I’ve given a very small homage in my own style lol.

• Cioccolato and pistacchio: Simply chocolate and pistache ahahahah.

• Oh mio Dio: your “Oh my God”.

• Cosa c’è?: “What’s the matter?”

#junzumi #junpei shibayama #izumi orimoto #digimon frontier #junpei #izumi #yeah I think it’s a month I don’t dare to look #I HAVE FINISHED IT AFTER A MONTH I CAN’T BELIEVE IT #the Muse coming whenever I need her the least hm hm #anyway this is Junzumi in my head #a couple of dorks who will end up together without drama and soap opera #I mean Junpei will date someone in the middle but that’s just some fun for me ahahah #zura writes

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