“Beauty in the Breakdown”
Chapter Eight: Moonlight Secrets
By Baine
Chapter 8
Finished: June 30th, 2008
Posted: September 14, 2010
*—(number) Implies that there is a Japanese cultural note regarding the topic at the end of the story.
AN: Guys, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for the long delay. If you’re still sticking with me, thank you. There’s really no excuse for it. The best I can say is that life got busy, I’ve been on the internet a lot less, have been focusing on original works more, and, most of all...I’ve been through a few different editors and can’t seem to stick with one. So from here on out, I don’t have an editor again. I’ve been trying to find someone new to no avail. I apologize right now for any and all mistakes from here out. One of my former editors once said that this particular chapter was one of my worst pieces of writing ever. It doesn’t seem that bad to me, and I’ve been over it time and again. Finally, I decided to just go ahead and post it anyway, or this story would never come to a conclusion. I’m sorry right now for how bad it might be!
Also, the earlier chapters have been revised and edited, so yay!
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Beauty in the Breakdown
Chapter 8: Moonlight Secrets
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Never in a thousand years would Usagi have expected to believe that Shingo’s imaginary ghost was actually real. She didn’t believe in beings trapped between two worlds; the only real spirits were the ones who created everything, and she only believed that because she was raised Shinto. She couldn’t stretch her imagination any further than that, though. Beings such as ghosts and shinigami simply didn’t exist outside the world of entertainment. *--1, *--2
Then again, she’d seen him with her own two eyes. It couldn’t be her mind playing tricks on her because she hadn’t seen his picture before now, unless... “Hey, were there any other pictures lying around when we boxed up the room?” she asked Shingo, looking at the debris spread across her brother’s floor. Could she have subliminally seen his face before she’d ‘seen’ him for the first time the night before?
Shingo furrowed his brow and shot his sister a skeptical look. “I dunno, maybe. I haven’t gone through all the bags yet. Why, want a new pin-up poster or something?”
“Like I’d want a photo of a dead boy,” she scoffed. “He isn’t even all that attractive.” She bit the inside of her cheek so that she’d maintain a straight face as the blatant lie slipped past her tongue.
“Then why ask, dipshit?”
She shot him a quelling look. “’Cuz the photo’s blurry, moron.”
“Don’t call me that; I’m smarter than you!”
“Yeah, well don’t call me dipshit.”
Shingo leaned across the floor to once more take hold of the yearbook. They wrestled over it for a minute, then he let go and settled for peering upside-down at the picture. “You’re right; he does live up to his name. He was probably pulling all those pranks on us because he was trying to protect his turf. Maybe we’d better give him his room and all his stuff back.”
Usagi rolled her eyes. “You’re such a geek, Shingo.”
“Yeah, well, it takes one to know one!”
“Real mature,” she muttered. Only her brother would take a sarcastic remark about the meaning of someone’s name at face value. Her scorn faded as she realized that if this ghost really did exist, maybe it wasn’t too far off to say that he was living up to his name and protecting what was his. She shifted uneasily, unwilling to tell her brother about her sudden change of heart, knowing he’d tease her mercilessly. If there was one thing you never did, it was tell a younger sibling that you were wrong, even when it was the truth.
“You know,” Shingo mused, pulling his sister from her thoughts, “Mamoru must have been only a year or two older than you when he died, Usa.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re on familiar terms already?” *--3
“He’s a member of our family now. Well, sort of.”
Usagi stared down at his picture again. He could have been someone she knew in real-life save for the old-fashioned haircut and uniform.
“He went to the local high school, too, just like you.” Shingo ran his thumb across the photograph, lost in thought. “Do you think anyone there would know how he died?”
“It was an awfully long time ago, Shingo.”
“But maybe people still talk about it. Ghost stories are cool! Ask your friends; you never know.”
“It’s really not important enough to look into. I mean, it’s not like hearing his story will bring him back from the dead.” She snorted derisively, wondering how her brother had yet to clue in to the fact that she didn’t have any friends here. Back home, she’d never stayed home all the time the way she did here. Did he seriously think she preferred hanging around the house with her kid brother while he went ghost-hunting?
“You’re not at all curious?” Shingo stood abruptly. He now towered over his sister, who was still sprawled across the floor, causing her to lazily turn onto her back and stare up at him. “He was really young, Usa, too young to die.”
“Maybe he was with the Yakuza or something. He has that sketchy look to him.” *--4
“So you’re admitting the ghost is real?” Shingo asked with a smirk.
Usagi gaped up at him, caught by surprise. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you’re playing ‘what if.’”
“Sue me now,” she quipped.
“What if you’re wrong?”
“About having a ghost in the house?”
“Well, I already know you’re wrong about that.” He stuck out his tongue and pulled down on his lower eyelid. “That means you’re probably wrong about how he died, too. He could have been sick and had cancer or something, you know.”
“Then he wouldn’t still be haunting this place, would he? Ghosts are beings that haven’t come to terms with their deaths. Prolonged sickness forces you to ponder ‘what if.’”
“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”
“I don’t, she responded shortly. “Doesn’t mean I haven’t heard the stories, though.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“What’s that, Conan?” *--5
“Ask him.”
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If he’d been alive, he would have had a colossal headache at the moment. That damn kid had been running around screaming his name, ‘Mamoru,’ for the past hour now. How the brat even managed to find it out, he didn’t want to know. He couldn’t escape to his bedroom like normal, either, since it had been taken over by the pampered princess. Normally, it wouldn’t have bothered him, but now that she could see him, he didn’t want to risk it. None of this had ever happened to him before. What made this family so different?
Hearing the kid call out his name yet again, he walked through the wall and headed outside to the nearby woods, lighting a cigarette along the way. If there was one thing that hadn’t changed since he’d died, it was the small forest at the edge of his property. When he’d been alive, he’d often come out here with Kamen, his pet Akita, in order to escape his father’s wrath. The quiet still continued to soothe him even in the afterlife. *--5
He sat aimlessly on an old, weathered rock by the stream in the heart of the woods, staring at the bubbling water as it rushed by. He was so lost in thought that he never heard the intruder in his midst until it was too late, jerking back to reality as he heard someone say, “I thought it was too late in the year to be seeing fireflies, but you never know. I never expected to find an actual person here, though.”
Turning his head to look over his shoulder, he saw a blur of white and gold. He realized it was the pampered princess a moment later when she sat down atop a rock near his own, the moonlight revealing her face. “What are you doing out so late?” he asked, snuffing out the lit cigarette that had revealed his location.
“It’s not that late; it’s not even eight.”
He glanced up into the sky and grunted. “Dark, though. Winter’s coming.”
“It’s okay. I’m safe on my own property.” She pulled her feet up onto her rock and cradled them with her arms, lowering her chin until it rested against her knees. “What about you? This is private property, you know.”
Smiling wryly, he turned his head to observe her from the corner of his eye. Either she was playing another of her games or she didn’t know it was him. He really didn’t care one way or the other. All that mattered was that she was seeing him at all—and talking to him, no less. He hadn’t had a civil conversation in years.
Ignoring his silence, she inquired, “Do you come here a lot?”
“Every now and again.”
“Me, too.” Sensing his surprised look, she added, “It’s peaceful here. It’s nice to have someplace to go when my pesky brother’s trying his hardest to bust my eardrums, y’know?”
He almost cracked a smile. Almost. But only because they were out here for the same reason, which wasn’t something he felt like sharing with her at the moment.
Instead, he made a noncommittal sound, somehow not wanting to burst her current illusion of him. He told himself it was because he didn’t want this brief stint with humanity to end.
“Do you have any siblings?” she asked.
“A younger sister.”
“Does she drive you crazy? Sometimes, Shingo drives me insane, especially since we moved here and he went off his rocker.”
Bust my eardrums, drive you crazy, off his rocker... Today’s slang baffled him. Why put words that had nothing to do with one another together?
Realizing she was waiting for an answer, he cleared his throat. “Er, sometimes, I guess. I haven’t seen her in a really long time, though, not since...” He was hit with a rush of nostalgia, and a crack appeared in the dam he’d so carefully built to hold his emotions.
“Not since...?”
He swallowed and closed his eyes. “Since she died.”
“She died? How?”
“Childbirth,” he whispered. “She never should have married that prick, but she didn’t listen.”
The blonde’s mouth dropped into a soundless ‘o’ and she slid from her rock, moving to stand before him.
He glanced up, suddenly noting that her hair shone silver as it reflected the light of the moon rising above them.
Her eyes dark and indecipherable, she slowly bowed in greeting. “I’m Tsukino Usagi, by the way.”
“I, uh—” He stared at her, frozen. If he told her his identity, she’d know who he really was, since her brother had been screaming his name all night. Suddenly, he didn’t want her to know the truth. His brain wasn’t working, though, and he couldn’t think up a false name. “I’m, um...”
She seemed to stare through him, her eyes suddenly sparkling with moonlight, and stated, “You’re Chiba Mamoru, aren’t you?”
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Cultural Note #1: The Shinto Religion is a type of animism, which means that they believe anything can have a soul or a spirit, even plants and animals. Therefore, Mt. Fuji has a mountain god at the top, the local river has a river god, and as my neighbor delights in telling me, there’s even a spider god (shiver!). Basically, anything that can exist in nature comes from the spirit of an earlier entity. Shinto followers don’t believe in the afterlife the same way Christians do. If you want to know more about the information, there’s a lot out there on the net and in books. ^^
Cultural Note #2: A shinigami is a type of Japanese “death god” that exists mostly in modern-day pop culture. Full Moon wo Sagashite, (My personal favorite! Tanemura Arina=LOVE in everything she creates!) Bleach, and Death Note are three popular anime/manga series that utilize shinigami; many more exist, too. Usagi is referring mostly to manga and anime when talking about “the world of entertainment.” Interestingly, it seems that shinigami have not been around since the time of Japanese mythology; they’re a much more recent creation in the Japanese culture. How much more, I don’t know, but that’s interesting to me!
Cultural Note #3: By “on familiar terms,” I mean that Shingo just says the name Mamoru and doesn’t add on a suffix such as –san or use the person’s last name. Merely saying Mamoru is a sign of familiarity in Japan, which is what Usagi’s berating her brother about at the moment.
Cultural Note #4: The Yakuza is pretty much the Japanese mafia. They’re scary, yo! And they don’t hide, either, b/c it’s not illegal for them to band together here. Be careful not to go into a Yakuza establishment (it’ll be clearly marked), or else!!
Cultural Note #5: Conan is a very famous detective from the Japanese anime/manga series Meitantei Conan, which you may know in English as Detective Conan or Case Closed. The series recently celebrated its Tenth Anniversary by airing a drama special on TV starring teen heartthrob Oguri Shun (who is most well-known for his role as Hanazawa Rui in the Japanese version of the Hana Yori Dangodrama), which went on to spawn a sequel drama. Japan loves Conan!
Cultural Note #6: An Akita is a Japanese breed of dog. Hachiko was a very famous dog that lived during the 1920s and 30s. Tales about this dog’s loyalty are still told today and the Akita is said to be an incredibly loyal breed of dog. In the series Nana, one of the girls named Nana has the nickname “Hachi” because of this dog! (Hachi also means ‘eight’ in Japanese, so her nickname is a double-pun.) There is also a movie about this famous dog, and I don’t know if it’s a rumor or not, but there have been whispers that Hollywood is planning to release a story about Hachiko as well.
Author’s Note: Nothing new other than what I previously stated at the beginning of the chapter. Again, I’m really sorry about the delay and hope to have more for you soon! This chapter has been written for, uh, a really long time. I have to write the next one, but I’m going to focus on it! I’m also going to put out some other stuff that’s been sitting around, too, so there will be more to read soon. It doesn’t mean that I’m focusing on these other pieces instead of BITB; they’ve already been written and BITB is what I’m going to be working on. It just might take a couple of weeks to post something new, so don’t fear if you see new chapters for something else! :-)
Like it? Hate it? I’m the one to talk to! Hit the little review button or e-mail lady_baine (at) yahoo (dot) com today!
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