#might even have had parents that noticed i was mentally ill instead of chalking my depression up to lack of moral fibre | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

maximilliandelirium · 7 years ago

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Nothing Ventured (excerpt)

When he was born, there was nothing in his heart but anger. It was a storm condensed. From that point on, he watched the world as though he were constantly approaching his breaking point. There was never enough quiet, never any peace, not in the house and not outside. It was too warm.

After a while, he got used to them. The Corps wasn't exactly what they were built to be, but they were something else. Something... familiar? It wasn't as though he blindly hated them anymore. He knew now that they were all rather strange people, a mishmash of different walks of life, shoved together in the hopes that they could make something.

They were all disparate pieces, and while Yukiki had thought of himself as the most alien of all them, it turned out that they were all about equidistant from the point of “normal.” The only thing he lacked was a past. Even Nuii, the abandoned doll, had something before now.

Eventually, he decided it didn't matter. What past they all had was obliterated in favor of the future, of the now. They could make it work. These little broken pieces could turn nothing into something. It was fascinating. Living things. Bonding.

Recently, he'd started getting a little more in touch with... emotions. Before, all he'd known was murderous rage and humiliation, which fueled the former. Now he was growing accustomed to things like humor and sadness. It wasn't entirely foreign. In fact, the whole process felt like reacquainting himself with someone he already knew, just hadn't seen in a long time.

His first clue that he had what might be called a soul was when Nuii, on a walk through the woods that surrounded the house, stretched her arms up to him in a silent request. And he'd felt something, like a tremor in his being. He had seen her do to the same to Mekeke countless times before and had watched as he'd scooped her up and laughed, tucking her beneath his arm or setting her against his hip.

So he had reached down and picked her up. She was lighter and heavier than he thought – the actual weight of a child – and set her against him, next to his shoulder. Nuii was soft and warm and though she didn't really breathe, she felt alive.

Of course, they'd all been shocked when he came back to the house with her half asleep in his arms. Their gaze had prickled. Mekeke had stood up, his one eye trained on the pair of them in a way Yukiki had never seen before. He wasn't angry. He was more... startled.

Yukiki had cleared his throat and handed her off quickly. Then he had shut himself in his room and wondered what had made the child trust him. No one in the corps was immune to Nuii, not even Giruru. But that was the first time Yukiki had ever touched her, treated her like the little girl she was, instead of another tool, another strange item amongst the lot of them.

Robobo found all of this fascinating. “Emotions,” he said, “are organic. You, my friend, are not organic.” And to prove it, he stuck a piece of wire straight through Yukiki's neck. It hurt, to be clear. Yukiki was not immune to pain. There was some comfort in that it still satisfied him to see Robobo struggling with some of his vital components frozen over, creaking over to the work table to fix himself before he completely shut down.

Putata had said to him before, “You're a cruel, cruel man.”

Maybe that was what it meant to have a heart of ice.

The children loved Mekeke. That was what they were calling them now. The children. Mekeke insisted on treating them as such, as did Giruru. They were not assassins; they were not soldiers. It wasn't fair to force them into such dangerous situations.

They were hanging onto his legs today and he was dragging them everywhere, with only the occasional snap at Gyororo for complaining when he bumped into something.

“If it's inconvenient for you, let go!”

“Never!”

“Kids today,” Mekeke joked in Yukiki's direction.

And he didn't get it.

Mekeke's brow furrowed at Yukiki's blank expression. So Yukiki had hidden behind a newspaper until the moment had passed. Why didn't he get it? He chalked it up – after a bit of research – to not having parents, or any early years at all. “Kids today” meant nothing to him, because he didn't know the kids of yesterday. Mekeke was being facetious, seeing as he and Putata were both children in adult bodies, but he at least knew the phrase, the concept.

He read to compensate. Reading gave him not only pleasure, but vital information that he used to build himself something of a false past, or at least knowledge of the way things were before. The more he read, the more he felt his tastes solidifying.

Though they could have gotten their hands on Keronian literature, Yukiki discovered he much preferred Earth classics. It was something about the letters, about the simplistic charm of them. It was nothing like the curly, spotted writing of the Intergalatic Standard. And human languages...

So he finally settled on himself: proper, neat, somewhat distant, a lover of the Victorian aesthetic. He'd never realized just how awful his clothes were before he learned of greener pastures: black coats, top hats, waistcoats. His accent hovered somewhere between Mid-Atlantic and British, which Putata mocked him for relentlessly.

It was as though he was finally discovering himself, all the pieces that had been missing. He might not be able to grow, but he could absorb. He could fill himself with new knowledge. He could shape what was already there into himself.

And then she appeared and ruined him.

Chapitre 2

They really couldn't have cared less about each other at the time. She was naturally polite, had said hello. Yukiki had looked her over, surprised that there was an actual woman in the house. The place was practically a monastery, save for Nuii, and he thought he might be hallucinating. But she was really there and was suddenly everywhere.

She had come for Giruru. Giruru, however, seemed mainly indifferent. Yukiki expected her to leave. He didn't understand. He'd read about love and that was the one thing he hadn't been able to absorb. Why leave yourself so vulnerable to another person? How could you not stop? His mind couldn't wrap around it.

Hanana herself was a strange one and not in the same way the others were strange. Yukiki had taken to keeping a mental list of his colleagues' idiosyncrasies, and so added her to the list.

ñ She somehow got Mekeke to help set up a greenhouse near the corner of the manor. They were out there together, driving pipes into the ground and stretching plastic over the framework. She had it filled with plants in less than two hours, in the ground and on tables and even hanging from the ceiling. Yukiki vowed to never go in, because it was too hot.

ñ She went everywhere without shoes. It was a warm autumn, which Hanana responded to by sliding out of her sandals and leaving them on the front porch. It was the same in the house. Bare feet on bare floorboards.

ñ She always had a flower tucked in her hair. A daisy. There was a fresh one every morning.

Hanana had introduced herself as nothing more than a gardener, kept on only because she was nice to people. She never had a mean word to say about anyone. Her smiles were ever present, gentle things that sometimes came with a giggle. Putata and Mekeke seemed to have fallen in love with her at first sight. They were always surrounding her, leaving their arms draped across her shoulders or held loosely around her waist. Yukiki couldn't imagine letting someone lay their hands on him like that, but Hanana took it with good grace. Giruru often turned the other way when she crossed his path, which struck Yukiki as childish. He pretended not to notice the way her smiles faltered when this happened.

But for all the things he'd cataloged about her, they hadn't spoken to each other since that first greeting. He heard her voice often, just never directed at him. They were hardly in the same room. Her presence made him uncomfortable. He didn't want to stoop to Giruru's level of avoidance, but he tended to ignore her whenever they happened to pass each other.

When he did speak more than two words to her, it was in her greenhouse. Yukiki, for all his resistance, found himself outside its door with a bowl of miso in one hand and a drink in the other. Kagege had sent him there with it. Hanana hadn't come out of the greenhouse all day and was missing dinner, so Yukiki was elected to take it to her.

He'd explained, in a dead calm, that the heat of the greenhouse was over the level he could tolerate, especially since it was getting colder outside. Kagege hadn't wanted to listen to it.

“You'll be in there two minutes at the most. Just do it.”

Yukiki had opened his mouth to argue again, but the bowl and the can were in his hands before he could say a word. So there he was. He couldn't see through the fogged plastic, save for greenish shadows. Finally, he sighed and used his elbow to push down the handle.

Hanana was at the far end of the greenhouse, her hair pulled back and kneeling on the soft, dark earth. The quality of the soil in here confused Yukiki. Outside, the dirt was thin and rocky. Hanana's presence must have some effect on it.

He was already starting to feel uncomfortable. The heat made him sluggish and ill tempered. He pushed himself deeper into his scarf, into the coolness reflected back at him by his clothes. The sooner it was winter, the better.

Hanana hadn't noticed him yet. She was digging and replacing soil, patting it with her small hands. Yukiki considered just leaving the can and bowl for her. He looked around for a place to put it. Every available space was taken by a plant.

Yukiki frowned. There was some organization here, but it wasn't a system he was familiar with. Would she mind if he moved a pot over? She probably wouldn't even look up. She was absorbed in her gardening. He gently elbowed a Venus flytrap back and set the bowl down.

“Oh! I didn't hear you come in!”

He nearly dropped the can. How embarrassing, to be caught fumbling it like that.

Hanana stood up, brushing her hands off on her skirt. “I didn't realize we were having dinner. Thank you. I've been really busy in here.”

Yukiki was at a loss. She was looking straight at him. He was itching. Nice people. And did it really have to be this warm? He cleared his throat. “You're welcome,” he said, placing the can next to the bowl. “Evening.”

He turned quickly, prepared to make his escape, when her voice stopped him. “Yukiki? We don't talk much, do we?”

He would not face her again. He would not be subject to her penetrating, kindly eyes any more than was necessary. “I don't see any reason why you would want to talk to me. We don't have much to say to each other.”

“I just want to get familiar with everyone. I'm going to be staying here for a while.”

He stiffened. “I do not 'get familiar' with people,” Yukiki said. “Evening.”

He left before she could stop him again, letting the door bang shut behind him.

Hanana didn't give up. If she was the type to quit things easily, she would never have made it this far. Her life was built on a positive attitude. So, after remarking that she and Yukiki didn't talk much, she set to correct it.

“Good morning,” she said, when they passed each other in the kitchen.

Yukiki, out of decorum only, repeated it back to her, but never pushed it further than that.

Hanana still didn't let it lie. Between her time in the greenhouse and her friendship with the twin idiots (as was Yukiki's nickname for Mekeke and Putata), she would find Yukiki. It was usually something small. She would ask him for directions around the house, or where certain things were – light bulbs, an electric mixer, fertilizer – and Yukiki continued keeping their interaction limited with succinct answers.

“Why are you scared of Hanana?” Putata finally asked one day. He was paper folding with Mekeke, a new Earth thing they were trying. Mekeke was better at it.

“I'm not scared of her.”

“Liar, liar,” Mekeke sang. “She's a really nice person. You should be nice back.”

Putata shook his head and grinned up at Yukiki. “He's not capable of that. Try being less mean.”

“I'm not mean,” Yukiki said, then stopped. He'd never thought about “nice” and “mean” in relation to himself before. It was another “organic” thing, as Robobo would classify it.

“You're, like, the meanest person we know,” Mekeke said. “Even Giruru can be nice sometimes and he doesn't even have a heart as far as we can see.”

“You do know that emotion doesn't really come from your heart, yes?”

Mekeke rolled his eye. “You're so literal.”

“Seriously, though,” Putata added. “You should be nicer to Hanana. I know it scares you that some people aren't always glaring at the rest of the world, but you have to face your fears eventually.”

“I'm not scared of some naïve little girl that only came here to be with her boyfriend,” Yukiki sneered. “I am simply not wasting time and energy on someone who unnecessarily takes up space in an already crowded house that contributes nothing but a pretty face.”

Mekeke and Putata had gone silent. They were staring at him. It wasn't the first time they'd heard one of Yukiki's withering insults. Why look so shocked? Then he realized that they were, in fact, looking over his shoulder.

Hanana was standing in the kitchen doorway, carrying a potted plant. Her expression was closed off, but her cheeks were flushed. Yukiki, looking at her, suddenly felt a stab of guilt. Why? He made it a rule to never regret what he said. Why should she make it any different?

“Is that really what you think?” she asked. Her voice didn't waver at all.

And Yukiki couldn't answer her. His mouth opened, then shut again. Behind him, he felt the disapproving stares of Putata and Mekeke prickling against his back. They didn't have the right to judge him. Why should he care at all?

“Well then,” Hanana said, taking his silence as a confirmation. She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving the room a little colder.

Mekeke stood up, gathering up the pieces of colored paper. “Come on, Putata,” he said. “I think we should leave the Grinch to himself.”

“Even for you,” Putata said, speaking directly to Yukiki, “that was harsh.”

Yukiki wanted to argue that they were just upset because he'd had something other than glowing praise to say about Hanana, but the words were still stuck in his throat.

“I hope you're proud of yourself.”

“Who are you to lecture me? You act like she doesn't exist.”

Giruru shook his head. “I don't talk about her like that behind her back, though. I have my reasons for shutting her down. You're just being a dick.”

Yukiki huffed. “She's been nothing but-”

“Nice to you? Friendly? Do you like kicking puppies too?”

If there was anything that bothered Yukiki more than Mekeke and Putata's disapproval, it was Giruru's. He couldn't see how Giruru was any better than him. He was just as mean to Mekeke and Putata on a daily basis.

What separated him and Giruru were memories. Giruru had them; Yukiki didn't. Simple as that. Otherwise, they were the same. Same matter, different states. Inorganic.

“You don't know Hanana,” Giruru said. “Mekeke and Putata, we know them. They're pests. You can smack talk them as much as you want. But you've only known Hanana for a few weeks.”

“She annoys me.”

“She annoys you because she has a soul and you don't.”

Yukiki blinked. “We're talking about souls now?”

Giruru sighed. “No. Bad word choice. I guess what I mean is that she's more alive than you and it makes you feel dead inside.”

“How dare you -!”

Giruru cut him off. “I know because that's how she makes me feel.”

Yukiki let those words settle over him. He sat back in his chair. He and Giruru weren't friends and the liquid Keronian never shared anything remotely personal with anyone but his brother.

“I know you're new to this whole 'feelings' thing and normally, I wouldn't be saying this, but you should apologize. She's not leaving. Please don't make things awkward for the rest of us.”

Yukiki scoffed at that. “Why, pot, you're looking awfully black today. As soon as you've told her upfront that you don't return her feelings and never will, I'll apologize. Until then, you have no right to be ordering me around.” He stood up and marched out.

Giruru had been right about one thing: it was awkward. There was no way to avoid Hanana. Her room was on his side of the house, so they had to pass each other in the mornings. She had stopped saying good morning. Yukiki pretended not to notice.

It was only an issue if they were in a room with other people, specifically Mekeke and Putata, who glared at him constantly. Yukiki glared right back, daring them to say something.

“If they didn't like you before, they hate you now,” Kagege said.

“It's ridiculous. They're only angry that I insulted their new pet.”

Kagege shrugged and set his freshly polished knives in a row. “Personally, I like Hanana. I can't tell you what to think of her. Not everyone is going to like the same people. But I think you should say sorry to her at least. If you're feeling uncomfortable, that is.”

Yukiki pretended to absorb himself in a newspaper article. “Do you think it will pass?”

“Maybe. It'll pass faster if you take the initiative. What you said was rather strongly worded and meant to hurt. And it was a bit like kicking someone when they're down. I doubt she did anything to provoke you.”

Yukiki thought of what Giruru had said and slipped even further behind the paper. Why was everyone ganging up on him? If he were Putata, he would have said they were brainwashed. Hanana couldn't be that compelling, could she?

Then again, Giruru was right a second time. He didn't know Hanana. He hadn't even tried to. Perhaps that was what drew a dividing line between him and the rest of the Corps. Would he change his mind if he learned more about her? If he did what she had been trying to do?

If they got to know each other?

There was only one way to find out.

Yukiki would never get used to the greenhouse. He was certain of this. Moments later, he'd spent a while waffling at the door before knocking. She didn't ask who was there, only called for him to enter.

Hanana was feeding her Venus flytraps, dropping pieces of raw hamburger into their mouths with tweezers. Yukiki found it both gruesome and yet fitting with her image. He watched as she ran a finger along one of them and smiled. Like it was her pet.

He cleared his throat. Her smile vanished instantly. Again with that closed off expression. “What can I do for you?” she asked, dusting her hands on her skirt.

“I came to apologize.” He had to do it fast, like plunging into water, otherwise he would lose his nerve. He'd never done this before. The new experience stretched ahead of him, black and unfathomable. “What I said... I wasn't used to you and it caused me discomfort, so I lashed out. And for that, I'm very sorry. After thinking it over, I realized that I didn't actively dislike you and that my frustration was misdirected. And I might have assumed...”

Hanana held up her hands. “I've never heard you talk this much,” she said.

Yukiki coughed and folded his arms. He was babbling. Oh no, he was afraid of her. He might as well cower at one of the Venus flytraps on her table. “I thought that, if you were willing, we could start over.” He forced himself to meet her eyes. He had never noticed before, but they were almost the same shade as her hair.

Hanana considered. “You take back what you said?”

“Yes.”

She bit her bottom lip, then allowed the smile to return to her face. Yukiki noted that she looked much better smiling than she did without. “You're lucky I believe in giving people second chances,” she said. “Apology accepted.”

Then she held out her hand. Yukiki looked down at it, then back up at her. She nodded, urging him with her eyes. Yukiki put out a cautious hand, gripped hers and shook.

Yukiki had never thought it would this satisfying to have smoothed things over with Hanana. She started greeting him in the mornings again and Yukiki made an effort to face his “fears.” He resolved to be civil, get used to her.

Once Mekeke and Putata saw that Hanana was no longer giving Yukiki the cold shoulder (ha, ha), they stopped looking so vilified. Instead, they went back to teasing.

“So,” Putata said. “You said sorry. I never thought you had it in you.”

“Don't expect me to continue,” he warned. “There's very little I plan to be sorry for.”

“You actually felt sorry, or did you just say it?” Mekeke asked, twisting bits of string between his fingers.

Yukiki thought about it. He remembered the strange speechlessness he'd experienced when Hanana walked into the kitchen. He was prepared to argue that Hanana had accepted the apology anyway, so what did it matter, but Mekeke was looking at him like he was waiting for an answer.

“I felt it,” he decided.

“That's good,” the puppeteer said with a smile.

But was it good? There was an advantage to not having emotions. Feeling sorry wasn't something he wanted to repeat. It had been terrible. Not to mention shame. He wished there was a way to pick and choose the emotions he experienced.

Things would be easier if he had just been born with them.

Chapitre 3

That night, he had his first dream. It was a nightmare.

It started out mundane. He had an itch in his throat and no water. All he could do was cough and cough until it felt as though his lungs were coming out. He looked at his hand, thinking he saw spots of blood on his glove. Impossible. But no, it wasn't blood – it was a rose petal. More petals fell from his mouth until a full bush of flowers sprouted from him, dark red and thorny.

Yukiki woke up with a gasp and put a few fingers in his mouth, just to make sure it wasn't real. Nightmares were things that happened to other people. Since when had his mind been able to conjure that sort of thing?

He chalked it up to his recent emotional exposure. After a few deep breaths, he decided to pick it apart. That usually helped. Yukiki did not believe in astrology or portents in dreams, but there had to be some meaning. Otherwise, what was the point? Unless his mind had just meant to terrorize him.

The flowers made him think of Hanana. Residual guilt? But he had apologized. He was treating her cordially now. There had been no repeats of the earlier incident. It was a mystery, one that he didn't want to waste time on in the middle of the night.

She's more alive than you.

He placed a hand over his chest. When he felt his heart beat against it, he knew he'd been foolish. He was just as alive as she was, with a pulse to prove it. Comforted – slightly – by that fact, he went back to sleep. He did not dream again that night.

Yukiki greeted morning with the half-lidded frustration of those that have missed sleep. What was worse was the attitude of the rest of the corps, who all seemed to be bursting with energy and smiles. Hanana passed him in the morning and treated him to quick look through her bangs, along with a polite smile. He didn’t return it. He wasn’t made to form such expressions.

“Looks like someone had a rough night,” Putata joked, elbowing him as he passed.

Yukiki shot him a death glare and the artist flinched. “My temper is very short today and if you knew what was good for you, you would leave me alone. Thank you.”

Putata laughed nervously. He shared a quick glance with Mekeke, who had shrunk meekly into his collar. “Uh, sure thing, Yukiki. We’ll be extra quiet today. C’mon, let’s go upstairs.” He pushed his partner out of the snowman’s path.

Yukiki rubbed his temples. He wondered if he could get sick. It didn’t seem possible, considering what he was made of. A snowman with a cold? Ridiculous.

“Are you alright?” Hanana asked.

Yukiki was prepared to brush her off, but her concerned expression stopped him. She cared about things. Even the slightest hint of discomfort would have her alert and ready to solve other people’s problems. She had other places to be, judging by the small stack of terracotta pots in her arms. There was no earthly reason why Hanana should stop and ask if he was alright, except that she was Hanana and this was something she did.

He realized that he was just staring blankly at her. Yukiki cleared his throat. “It’s nothing you need to worry about,” he said.

“If you say so.” But her lips had dropped into a tiny frown.

It must frustrate her, Yukiki thought, to have someone shrug off her attempts to help. Well, she could do with some frustration. He would rather not rely on her for comfort, especially considering how sourly their relationship had started – if you could even call it a relationship.

He should have expected, however, that she would bring it up later and catch him with his guard down. Yukiki was so absorbed in his book that he hardly registered it when Hanana placed a cup in front of him.

“I made tea. Thought you might want some,” she said softly. “There’s chamomile in it.”

Yukiki looked at the cup, then at Hanana, who was taking a long sip and looking the other way. He saw her game now. He’d been stupid to believe she would give up after being told once. Well, it would be a waste to let it sit there.

As he took the cup, he asked, “Chamomile?”

“It’s a flower,” she explained. “Its effects are very soothing.” Now she was watching him. And she was nervous. Her posture was stiff. “Tea is okay, right? You can drink it?”

“What? Oh, yes actually.” For some reason, eating or drinking warm things didn’t bother him. Yukiki doubted he would ever figure out why. He’d refused to let Robobo stick a camera down his throat to investigate.

“Good.” She opened her mouth to add something, then shut it again.

This was no good. She couldn’t be nervous; Yukiki was struggling not to show just how odd it felt to be speaking to her like this. If they were both tiptoeing around each other, then how were they supposed to move past all that initial unpleasantness?

Then it hit him: the tea was an olive branch of her own. She was trying to reassure him that there were no hard feelings. Even if he hadn’t been looking ill, Hanana would have given it to him anyway. But why? They had been getting on the past few days. If it was a peace offering, it should have come earlier.

Yukiki took a cautious sip. He couldn’t tell if it really was soothing or not, but he liked the feeling of swallowing heat. It proved he was strong.

“How is it?” Hanana asked, peeking at him from behind her cup.

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had no sense of taste. “It’s nice. Thank you.”

She looked relieved. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Aha. That’s what this was. She had needed an excuse to speak to him face to face. Yukiki admitted to feeling a bit guilty about that. He knew he was particularly unapproachable and had done nothing to fix the matter. Well, he drank her tea. So there was that.

“What about?” he asked, closing his book.

Hanana put down her cup and folded her hands on the table. She cast her gaze down at them. “That’s the thing. I’m not sure how to talk to you. With everyone else, it’s easy. But with you… I don’t know. I’d like us to be friends. It just feels like having a conversation with a wall.”

Yukiki knew it was only adding to the problem, but he said nothing. He had to think. He couldn’t be like Putata and let all of his thoughts and feelings spill out without a filter. Tact didn’t come easy to him.

Luckily, Hanana had more to say. “You said I made you uncomfortable, right? Maybe if we became better friends, you would stop feeling that way.”

Yukiki took a deep breath. “That’s fair. If I’m going to be honest, I don’t know how to talk to you either.”

“Why?”

He didn’t know how to describe it. There was a reason, one that existed on some base level, one that had nothing to do with Giruru’s stupid ideas about souls. Yukiki groped for an answer, then settled for, “You’re too nice.”

To his surprise, Hanana laughed. “Is there such a thing as being too nice? I just try and treat people like I’d want to be treated.”

“But don’t you ever get tired of it?”

“No.” She put her head to one side. “Why would it be tiring?”

Of course she wouldn’t see it that way. It came naturally to her. However, for Yukiki, it was a struggle. He sat back in his chair. Hanana was both simple and complicated. It would take a lot more than a mere exchange of words to understand her. He was unprepared for that.

“You must get frustrated though,” he tried. “Angry even. You can’t be kind to people twenty-four hours a day.”

“Of course I get angry. I’m a person.” Her smile was understanding, as though she was talking to a child. “I think we get angry in different ways. When I get annoyed, I try to calm down so that I don’t hurt other people’s feelings.”

Yukiki’s mouth felt like it was full of acid. He glanced down at his cup, wondering if the whole sweet act was a front, and she had just poisoned him. “I suppose that’s the fundamental difference between you and me,” he said.

It must have come out sounding very bitter, because Hanana started and said, “I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. That’s water under the bridge.”

“What I don’t understand is why you would like us to be close friends,” Yukiki said. “Mekeke and Putata have probably told you enough horrible things about me to keep your distance.”

“I don’t think you’re as awful as they say you are and they don’t either.”

Yukiki frowned. How she had come to that conclusion, he had no idea, seeing as he’d been distant and cold to her until now.

“I guess you don’t hear that often,” she continued, seeing his confused expression. “I believe in finding good in everyone. Don’t you ever get tired of being angry?”

She was something else. “Anger is power. And I’m not angry all the time.”

“Obviously. You’re a person too. You feel differently depending on the situation.”

Yukiki laughed dryly. “I’m not really a person.”

“But you’re alive.”

She’s more alive than you. Yukiki pressed his lips together. He remembered his dream, the roses bursting from his mouth and dragging their thorns up his throat. When he didn’t answer, Hanana stood up, taking her tea with her.

“You’re not a bad person,” she said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have apologized.”

Her smile was radiant. It hurt Yukiki’s eyes. He looked away. Snow kills flowers, but warmth melts the snow. This was dangerous.

#yukihana #a bit of a fic

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idolizerp · 7 years ago

Photo

[ LOADING INFORMATION ON HEAVEN’S LEAD VOCAL MOON MONA…. ]

DETAILS

CURRENT AGE: 24 DEBUT AGE: 16 SKILL POINTS: 13 VOCAL | 12 DANCE | 0 RAP | 15 PERFORMANCE SECONDARY SKILLS: Multi-instrumentalist (guitar, piano)

INTERVIEW

debuting fresh off her sixteenth birthday, moon mona was perhaps an atypical choice for the group heaven. they came onto the scene with a healthy, fresh image that loosely translated to hot girls on a beach, and at sixteen this was probably not the image that mona ought to have been taught how to project.

in fact, she probably shouldn’t have debuted that young at all. there is something inherently damaging in entering the public eye that early. the scrutiny wears at you, an endless tide beating against crags and cliffs until they wear smooth as sea glass.

many times, this is how mona feels.

a wild child plucked from the streets of jeju, from backroads where sand blows over the asphalt on the breeze that carries with it the scent of the ocean. maybe this is why she so easily melts into the role of summer goddess when it is bequeathed to her. she has the energy and power of the ocean, she thinks fondly, when she watches herself dance. this is what they capitalize on. she has a sensuality beyond her years, a grace that defies age, a presence that commands attention.

it disappears offstage into a flurry of eye smiles and half hidden laughter, tucked behind a hand that trembles just a little bit, nervous still under the direct glare of the camera, the lights. she’s young when she debuts, and foolish, and the image that they have her selling - relatable, girl next door, but impossibly hot - is one that both suits her and stifles her.

lead this, lead that, she isn’t the strongest at either skill. she doesn’t have the range to sing main, with her voice lending itself to a certain mellow, husky timbre. as she gets older and her voice continues to change and develop, it moves further into this range, and farther from the expected idol falsetto filled soprano range. but she manages within her range just fine. her live performances are stable and day by day, more and more, she commands attention. she draws eyes. it covers her shortcomings, the way she can move, the look in her gaze. they chalk it up to a natural sex appeal. mona could wear a potato sack and still look like a million bucks, still have fans knocking at her door, that’s what they say. at eighteen, nineteen, even twenty the comments make her uncomfortable. by twenty one she doesn’t really watch her parts in their videos anymore. she knows what they’ll focus on, how the camera will pan over toned thighs or the curve of her ass, or her chest, she knows the look in her eyes because she’s spent hours practicing it in front of the practice room mirrors. it all feels so hollow, but it sells like hotcakes.

she can feel herself changing, day by day, under the weight of a thousand eyes, purposefully smoothing out the rough edges of herself, until she is polished and shining and pristine. effortless in her casual charm, in her relatable silliness, in the way she can so naturally shine with a sincerity that doesn’t seem half so manufactured as it is.

maybe it’s not. maybe this is who she is now, changed by the constant weathering of the sea. featureless and shining, polished until she is devoid of anything, a mirror held up to reflect the image men want to see in her. because let’s be honest, she was placed in the group not for her outstanding talent, but for her visual appeal, even then. curves in the right places, a warmth and charm that drew in the viewer, a gap between on stage and off that compelled fascination. mostly, mona is just glad they can’t see that she’s tired of this. of the same summer tracks, of the same summer vibes, of the same shaking hips and the same casual undulations, suggestive but tasteful, they claim. she’s very well trained, she thinks, because she never rolls her eyes half so hard as she might want too.

and she gets the sort of rumors that the hypersexualized type tend to get. is she dating this one or that one, is she posing like that on purpose? did she get her boobs done, are they real, is she showing them off? why does she try so hard, doesn’t she know this is trashy, isn’t this inappropriate? can’t she do anything but dance and make those faces, doesn’t she have anything else to show us? isn’t it always the same?

it is, mona wants to tell them. it is always the same, because that’s what you all wanted. that’s what’s selling my albums and my merchandise. that’s why i’ve had a dietician and a trainer since i was sixteen years old, that’s why i spent my childhood smiling at leering middle aged men. and now you want me to do something else?

she’d like too, sure. she dreams of an artsy, lo-fi album. something folk inspired maybe, just her and a guitar and some producers to fill in the gaps. but the company knows no one wants that, they tell her. no one wants that from moon mona of heaven. they want a toned body and a bright smile and a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, they want long hair in artfully done waves that suggest she might just have left the ocean. and she can give that to them, so why risk anything else?

and so mona is seaglass. weathered and unchanging, polished to a smooth shine. featureless but beautiful, meant to be admired, touched, and then put away again to keep for another summer day.

BIOGRAPHY

MOON MONA is born at the stroke of midnight, which might have meant something magical and mysterious in another story, but in this one, it means only that her mother had a little tidbit of a story to share about her midnight baby. The seaside hospital was perfectly well equipped and her mother faced no difficulties with the delivery, other than the usual. Her father was - and remains - quite typical of his generation. Fifteen years older than her mother, he was smoking outside when Mona was born, and would remain sort of blandly absent for the remainder of their relationship. Mona holds no ill will here. In a rapidly developing society, he is undoubtedly the product of his time and not of her own. Not even of her mother’s, somehow.

Her mother is a lecturer at a nearby school - a small affair, nothing notable. She teaches biology to freshmen and an upper level botany course and Mona is surrounded by flowers and the sea from birth. The young girl is tangled in them, in the smell of fresh cut grass and salt spray, flowers braided into her hair during long hours in the fields on the edges of town, only a bus ride away.

She loves the bus, loves to stare out the window as it rattles and lurches through the town. When she gets older, her indomitable will and unstoppable energy demand trips to the nearby city to go to dance classes. She’s grown tired of the basic fare offered her in her smaller town, and so an hour off she rides, thumping along the road and dozing between stops. As she grows older and her interest refuses to wane her mother expresses gentle discouragement and her father nods in distracted agreement in the corner.

Perhaps the most attention either of them pay to her, she thinks later, is when she skips school to attend auditions for the first time. They’re furious of course, at the call from the school, at the fact she hadn’t answered her phone, at the fact she dared run off to audition at all. What a stupid pipe dream, they tell her. Do you think we moved to Busan for this, so you could gallivant off to the capital and do whatever you want?

The move had upset her, honestly. Stealing her home away had been the most intolerable cruelty for a girl of thirteen, had unleashed a rebellious fury only the unbridled ocean and other parents of teenage girls with strong wills and fierce eyes could imagine, or hope to match. So at thirteen Mona’s willful teenage form of rebellion is to pursue a pointless dream, spurred on by her fondness for the likes of SNSD and the Wonder Girls. She copies choreography, she practices singing, begs her way into continuing vocal lessons. She skips after school classes to put in more hours dancing or singing, she spends her time making faces in the mirror and wielding a hairbrush, as so many do.

The difference is that one day, someone sees something in her.

She’s promising they tell her. She has a look, a vibe, and how old is she right now? They don’t seem deterred by her confident answer of fifteen, just take a step back to examine her, ask if she can sing, or dance maybe, and are pleased when she answers to the affirmative. She should have known then, taking the card, turning up for the audition, that they’d been more sold on her face, her figure than anything else. But she was young, and she was foolish, and she had a silly little dream, as her mother might say.

The second time her family really, really notices her is when she explains she’s thinking of moving in with her aunt while she trains.

Her father is distractedly horrified, perhaps more because he should be than because he’s actually unhappy about it, and her mother has sort of just given up on the idea of an academically inclined daughter, a daughter she could maybe relate too, in some way. There isn’t an attempt to meet Mona at her level, to get to know her, or why she loves dance so much. They dismiss these things as childish whims, tell her to come home when she’s ready.

She debuts instead.

In an instant her life changes. Immediately she becomes frozen in time, it seems. Mentally she feels still as though she never quite left that moment of being a naive sixteen year old, practicing choreography designed to put more than mildly inappropriate thoughts into the heads of viewers, thrilled because this was her big chance, her big break. Foolish, ultimately, but not untrue.

She has made it, after all. At twenty four she’s established a name for herself, a brand. That brand might not be one she wants, nor one she is comfortable with, but it sells. Sex always sells, and until she hits that magical age at which women cease to appeal to men sexually on a general level, and then she’ll retire and do something like mediocre acting or variety or nothing, just get married and fade away.

Mona is seaglass. She would like to be a flower, taking root and blooming, growing day by day, flourishing, flowering. But Mona is not life and greenery, she is not reaching and seeking. She is sea glass, polished and glimmering, appealing in the moment and ultimately discarded.

#id.heaven #id.99 #id.kim chungha #id.bio

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enzaime-blog · 7 years ago

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Norine Reed's Alzheimer’s Disease and Survival

New Story has been published on https://enzaime.com/norine-reeds-alzheimers-disease-survival/

Norine Reed's Alzheimer’s Disease and Survival

Norine Reed had worked at a Portland apparel company for two years when she noticed something strange happening. She’d start a routine task and forget what came next, as if she had driven into a mental fogbank. Her primary care doctor chalked up Norine’s memory problems to stress and told her not to worry; we all forget things as we get older. But Norine’s problem just seemed to grow. Her large, boisterous family (her son-in-law affectionately calls them “the loud family”) noticed that Norine was telling the same stories over and over, as often as three times in a single evening. She started getting lost, even in her own neighborhood in Troutdale, Ore. Her grown daughter, Christine, remembers when her mother was driving them to Target just a few blocks away from Norine’s home. “She went to turn left at the light when we were supposed to turn right,” Christine says. “I said, ‘Where are you going?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ She forgot where we were going. She forgot where she was.” Norine’s memory problems began to take a toll on her 33-year marriage to Todd, a friendly security system salesman. “She’d ask me something about my job, then completely forget what I told her,” he says. “I thought she was just not paying attention to me. That she didn’t care.” But it was a routine medical appointment that sounded the final alarm. On the day of her checkup, Norine arrived at the clinic to find a sign on the door directing patients to a new address. When she found the new location, she told her doctor, “You moved and didn’t tell me!” “Norine,” the doctor said. “We moved a long time ago. You’ve been here since then.” The physician referred Norine to neurologist Michael Mega, M.D., Ph.D., medical director of Providence Cognitive Assessment Clinic at Providence Brain Institute. After a series of tests, ranging from pencil-and-paper quizzes to sophisticated brain scans, Dr. Mega delivered the diagnosis on Feb. 9, 2009. As Norine sat with Todd, Dr. Mega showed them a scan of a healthy middle-aged brain, then a brain of an 80-year-old. Norine’s brain looked more like the 80-year-old’s. Her hippocampus, the center in the brain where memory is formed, was shrinking. Norine had rare early onset of Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative disease that destroys memory, reasoning, thinking and eventually the body’s ability to function. It strikes the vast majority of its sufferers after age 65, and the average life expectancy after diagnosis is 10 years. Norine and Todd were in shock, then in tears. Norine’s thoughts immediately turned to her grandmother, who has dementia and requires 24-hour help. “I don’t want to live like that,” she told Todd, “where somebody has to take care of me.” What distinguishes Alzheimer’s disease from other forms of dementia is the presence of clumps of toxic proteins in the brain, believed to be the cause of the disease. One of these proteins is the sticky “beta-amyloid,” which binds together to form plaque between nerve cells. Another protein creates tangles rather than plaques. Researchers suspect that both tangles and plaques play important roles in the formation of Alzheimer’s disease. In the 1980s, Alzheimer’s research made a giant leap forward when scientists discovered a gene mutation in some families that causes carriers to produce excessive amounts of the amyloid protein. At last, researchers could isolate that defective gene, inject it into mice, and study the effects of the beta-amyloid protein and plaques on a living creature. As research progressed in human trials, scientists discovered that treatments to eliminate beta-amyloid protein and plaques didn’t have much effect on people with late-stage Alzheimer’s. By then the damage to the brain had been done and couldn’t be reversed. Antiamyloid treatments might, however, benefit people in the early stages. Fortunately, better diagnostic testing now allows doctors to detect Alzheimer’s earlier, when the toxic proteins are just beginning to have an effect. The research trials at Providence Brain Institute are targeted for people with very early Alzheimer’s disease and its precursor, mild cognitive impairment. Support for this research comes from Providence St. Vincent Medical Foundation. If successful, these treatments can be given long before toxic proteins and plaques cause irreparable damage – a potential breakthrough in treating Alzheimer’s. “If these new agents delay the decline from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease by merely five years,” Dr. Mega says, “then the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in our society will be cut in half.” “I was losing my best friend” In the weeks after her diagnosis, Norine hadn’t yet enrolled in a clinical trial at Providence. She was still reeling from the news, which hit her husband as hard as it did her. “I was losing my best friend,” Todd says quietly. “It seemed like the end of the world at that point. She was going to fade away and forget who I was.” The couple met when they were both 20. Norine worked as a computer operator at the University of California, Los Angeles. She was on her way home one night when she decided to stop by the Air National Guard base to visit a young man she had a crush on. Instead, a new guy was working the shift – Todd Reed. “She actually laughed at my jokes,” he recalls. “I just said, ‘Hey, if you have nothing to do, why don’t you just stay around and talk?’” The pair was inseparable from then on. They were engaged a month later and married within six months. They had four children, Christine, Mindy, Matthew and Eric. They built a life together and watched as their own parents and grandparents aged. Even as Norine’s grandmother developed a non-Alzheimer’s dementia, Norine never thought she’d develop a similar illness, and certainly not at age 51. By the time she was diagnosed, Norine’s ability to work had deteriorated to the point that she took a voluntary layoff. Although she didn’t suffer the visual or spatial misperceptions common with Alzheimer’s disease, she stopped driving for fear of getting lost. Now she and Todd threw themselves into battling the disease in whatever way they could. Norine bought every vitamin and supplement that Dr. Mega suggested. She worked on lowering her stress, which has a damaging effect on the brain. She did brain teasers to help grow new neural networks to replace those killed by beta-amyloid protein. And she began taking Aricept, an Alzheimer’s medication that sometimes sharpens mental acuity. The couple joined an Alzheimer’s support group for patients and their families, but found the experience unnerving. “It was hard listening to the people who were further along than I was,” Norine says. “You see your future, and you’re heading toward it,” Todd adds. “You can’t stop it,” Norine says, “It’s like a train.” A remarkable change Six months after diagnosing Norine’s condition and stabilizing her medication, Dr. Mega suggested she enroll in a clinical trial for an antibody called bapineuzumab (pronounced bap-ah-NEWzu-mab). Bappi, as it’s called, is an antibody produced by rabbits that binds to the beta-amyloid protein and removes it from the brain. It’s in the last phase of testing before possible approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. As with many clinical trials, this one has a necessary catch: Norine wouldn’t know whether she was getting the antibody or a placebo. The blind approach helps determine if a given treatment is working. She agreed without hesitation and began receiving infusions every 13 weeks. After her first infusion, she didn’t notice any change except for a migraine headache. It was possible that she had been given an inert substance, the placebo. Her second infusion seemed about the same at first. Shortly afterward, her daughter Christine asked her mother how many infusions she’d had. “Two,” Norine replied. The significance of that answer was almost imperceptible, but it didn’t escape Christine. Her mother had remembered the number. After the third infusion, other positive signs began to emerge. Norine would start to tell a story and stop herself. “Did I tell you this?” she’d ask. “That’s right, I did.” Norine became aware that she wasn’t getting lost as often. The fatigue that had drained her during the months before the diagnosis and forced her to nap before and after work was going away Her friends noticed that the shuffling gait she had developed also was disappearing. By now it was irrefutable: the fog in Norine’s brain was beginning to lift. “I was able to read again,” Norine recalls. “Before starting the trial, it would take me months to even read a skinny paperback because I couldn’t remember what I’d just read.” After the third infusion, “I started realizing that I was able to understand. That’s how I knew I was getting better.” Dr. Mega doesn’t know for certain if Norine is getting the antibody, but a battery of tests given every three months confirms that Norine is regaining her cognitive ability. Nearly two years after she began the clinical trial, Norine has regained many of the abilities she had lost. She no longer relies on the written reminders that used to guide her through each day. And after some gentle prodding by Todd, she is driving again, starting with short trips to the nearby coffee shop. She’s considering going back to school to get a master’s degree in apparel design, a project that would continue to exercise her mind. In the meantime, she has taken a temporary job with another apparel manufacturer. “There’s a possibility that the stress might be too much,” Norine says of her new job. “If I start to feel like it’s too much, I won’t continue.” “We’re taking it a day at a time,” Todd says. “There are no guarantees. But I’m so grateful for Providence, for Dr. Mega, for the study. We got our life back. Whether it lasts for 30 years, or 10 years or 10 more months, we’ve got our life back.”

#80-year-old’s #diagnosis #diagnostic testing #shuffling gait #temporary job #treating Alzheimer #Others

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