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English
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Published:
2013-08-25
Completed:
2013-09-08
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3,550
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2/2
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tiny infinities

Summary:

series of shorts (drabbles, ficlets?) set with FeMC, named Minako, not always in the same universe, not always sensical.

Chapter 1: log 001

Chapter Text

run away with me

When Mitsuru asks her if she's ever thought of running away to somewhere no one knows her, she ends up saying, "I am happy where I am," and is surprised when she isn't called out on the blatant lie—though how could anyone tell, when she's made wearing masks the fuel for her power?

nightmares

aki 01

Akihiko prowls her dreams,—blood streaming down his face and out his gaping wound of a mouth—begging for her to reach inside him and hold his heart in her hands to keep it safe. "I'll live forever if you do," he whispers when he finds her and bites the fingers off her hand.

fuuka 01

She begins to have dreams where Fuuka's eyes are replaced with diamonds (the real ones held out as an offering on a copper plate) and rubies fall out of her cut throat. Shadows with the shape of men swarm around the sickly girl and tie ropes to her ankles to drag her away but she doesn’t budge, only plead with her eyes—she doesn’t know with which ones—for an absolution Minako didn't know how to give.

shinji 01

It doesn't matter that Shinjiro bleeds camellias in her dreams or that sometimes he stands up to shower her with the blossoms, burying her in them until she can't breathe (pink for longing, white for perfection, and red for you are a flame in my heart) while assuring her it was the way things should be.

mitsuru 01

Sometimes she has dreams about Mitsuru where the girl twirls her too bright hair in a way that’s terrifying in impossibility alone, a fear that only worsens when she giggles. “I want to run away,” she says, “maybe I’ll ride my motorcycle straight into the ocean. I’ll become a mermaid and fall in love with a prince; I’ll drown him though, because love ends with marriage, I know; I've read it in a book.” She giggles again, and Minako wants to say something about how mermaids don’t have talons like Mitsuru but maybe they have hair that moves on its own like hers. But by then Minako’s mouth is already stuffed full of scarlet locks and she’s already being pulled down into the depths of the ocean where Mitsuru licks her ear and says, “be my prince.”

animus

“You,” she says to Theo one day, “you’re my animus, right? I think so.”

She squints at the printed sheets she’d pulled out of her bag. Messy annotations line the sides of the pages, (psychology, she found, was a subject that required knowledge of terms that looked like one thing and meant another and one that required far more introspection than she had the time or courage for) and she reads one of them aloud, voice stuttering over the illegibility of her own writing. “The animus is the, ah, manifestation of the female’s unconscious masculine traits, her inner male personality.”

Theo smiles at her, patient and slightly amused. “Is that so?”

Minako gives it thought and replies with an affirmative.

“Well then,” he says, “what does your inner male say about you?”

She realizes she’d been so proud of the solution she had reached that she hadn’t thought about what it all meant. Problems and solutions with no practical application.

She watches Theo out of the corner of her eye, refusing to look at him directly, because he’ll only give her that look, the one that makes her blush and forces her to ignore the pulse that goes through her at the sight of it. It’s the one he uses when he says things like, “it’s your fault, you know” and “now you’ll be safe now for all eternity” and “please, go on, teacher.

“I’m a pervert?”

He chuckles, hiding his mouth behind a white gloved hand, “Minako-sama, not everything has to mean something. Some things simply are. Besides, I do not like to think I am defined by a single personality trait. There are many more sides to me, unbeknownst to you and even to myself.”

“Alright then,” she agrees.

They continue to walk in silence.

“Next time,” Theo announces, “I should like to see your room.”

He smiles at her, and god damn it she looked.

narcissus

Looking at Ryoji is like looking at her reflection in reverse. A double that looks nothing like her. He’s got eyes like me even though they’re not the same color or shape they might as well be my eyes, she thinks, his nose and mouth too.

When he walks past her in the morning to get to his seat, her eyes trace his profile, noting how the distance between the top of his forehead to the tip of his nose is more than likely the same as the distance between hers.

When he follows Junpei out the door at the end of class—both of them excitedly chattering inanities—she considers the back of his head and decides that someone could mistake them for each other from behind, his male frame and height notwithstanding.

Akihiko sees but keeps quiet. Aigis sees and tightens her fists with an audible metallic groan. Nobody knows what Junpei sees and he doesn’t reveal his thoughts on the matter. Yukari sees and asks her what she thinks she’s doing when any other girl would kill to take her place next to Aki.

“I dunno,” she answers, “I’m sorry.”

The apology does nothing to stop her. Her eyes track Ryoji’s form with his every movement, hungry in a way that’s completely different from lust, but too difficult to explain.

“It’s like he’s got something I’ve had my whole life and just barely lost,” she tells Aki, when he finally presses her face to his chest in an effort to get her to look away, “like I dropped it somewhere and he picked it up and won’t admit to having it.”

“What is it?” he demands, wanting to be harsh in response to the pain she causes him, but finding it too difficult to be rough with her. “I’ll give you anything, Mina, just ask me.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” she frowns and turns back to Ryoji, who is hiding his mouth and chin in his scarf and looking at Fuuka through half-lidded eyes. She compares the long fingers and palm held over his heart to her own small hands being held by Akihiko’s. They’re really similar if you look at the pattern of veins on the back and how the pinkie curls in slightly.

And the next day when he tells her that he lived inside her for ten years, she thinks well it was obvious wasn’t it, we are exactly alike.

aki and shinji

They didn't say her name much anymore. Instead, they gave a wide breadth to corners just in case she walked around them at the same time. Sometimes, they'd leave room enough for a petite, seventeen year old girl to lie in between them in bed. They didn't say her name. Shinji's ruined pocket watch gathered dust in a music box that also held a small stuffed rabbit. They had nothing to say about a girl who'd chosen death as a lover before picking between two (mostly) healthy, breathing boys. Maybe she'd seen the cracks in them and been disgusted, or maybe she'd seen how they reached for her only to fill the jagged edges with her softness. They didn't talk about that girl, who embraced death but not before guiding them into see how their broken pieces slotted perfectly to each other’s.

ticklish

Yukari falls asleep next to Minako on the train back.

On top of Minako, actually, but Minako adjusts to the weight and carefully moves aside the heart on her friend’s choker so it doesn’t stab her.

Yukari clutches her new CD in one hand, for a band whose name Minako considers to be unpronounceable (those are symbols not letters, she insists, how do you say them?) and breathes against Minako’s neck in a way that makes her curl her toes and hold in a squeak of surprise. She hadn’t known she was ticklish.

how it should be

Koromaru barks a greeting at Shinji as he slams the door closed with his foot. He's been yelled at for the habit, but his grocery loaded arms are his excuse and pardon for today.

"I'm home."

Minako hops up from where she'd curled next to Aki during their Bruce Lee marathon.

"We finished Game of Death."

"Damn it," Shinji says, "you ain't getting mochi then."

Mina peers into a bag, fishing out her favorite ice cream. She kisses Shinji on the cheek in thanks for not forgetting (not that he ever has) before grabbing a spoon and taking it back to the couch to share with Aki. Koromaru follows her to steal the spot that would've been Shinji's soon.

"You're not gonna help?" Shinji exclaims. He wonders at how his life ended up with him polarizing from a back alley punk to a bullied house husband.

Aki stares balefully at him while opening his mouth for a spoonful of ice cream from Minako. He wrinkles his nose at the sweetness, but swallows it obediently.

"No way. It's Mina's birthday and all she wants is mochi and you won't make it for her."

"I'll make the fucking mochi, then, just start the movie from the beginning."

how it is

Akihiko leans down to rub at the old dog's now patchy fur.

"You're a good boy, Koromaru. The strongest and bravest dog I know. It's alright for you to go now."

Koromaru, lying on his side, looks into the man's tired silver eyes.

He communicates his apologies to the man through soft pants and whines—for leaving him alone, with no one to protect or to be protected by and even more so for leaving him no one to love or be loved by.

Akihiko swallows the ball of pain that pushes its way up his throat. "I keep losing my family, huh? But it's okay. It'll be okay. I have good memories of everyone and I'll keep pushing on, so don't worry about me."

Koromaru whines again before shutting his eyes.

"Say hi to those two for me."

death visits her

He visits her. Sometimes he wears Pharos's face and sometimes Ryoji's, but never Death's.

He asks her if she'd redo anything if she had the chance, like refuse to fight or just ignore schoolwork to spend time with her friends.

She has to think about it, scratching at the barbed wires around her wrist, aware that she isn't actually moving at all.

"I'd drink more orange juice," she tells him, feeling her mouth shape the words and also stay completely still.

"Why's that?"

"I got sick a lot. Maybe I needed more vitamin C."

He agrees. It's a fair argument.