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Till Our Lives Burn Out
(Chapter 7- Bloody Sunday
Part 1b)
... Hotaru quieted her mind. She could feel it. He was going to open up to her. She was about to get answers to the questions she had long wanted to ask, but didn’t because she simply enjoyed being around him so much and didn’t want to do anything to mess it up.
“People here say that light needs darkness in order to be known. It’s nonsense. Very plausible, very human nonsense, but nonsense. I know of a place where there’s a … a light - imagine this, Hotaru, - a Light that goes where even the light of the sun cannot go. In it, there is no darkness.”
“Why would you … leave such a place?” she asked. She was gaining confidence to ask anything, and he been prepared to tell his story since the night she snuck him into the house to make them all dinner.
“Something happened, and I had to leave. For a time. You might say there was something between me and that Light. But now that’s over. I can go home anytime.”
“Are you going to go … home?”
“Well, there’s still one little problem.”
‘What?’ her expression begged.
“I am in love with your Setsuna-momma. Madly. And … I want to know what happens to you. I have to know. The night I heard you laugh, I knew there was something special about you. I could hardly wait to meet you, and now I know why. This is going to sound crazy, but I think you’re someone I’ve been looking for, for a long, long time. In fact, until you said something the other night, I didn’t even know I’d been looking.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, since this is the last time I’ll get to see you,” he said melodramatically, “can I tell you a story?”
She nodded.
“No, no,” he said rather sternly, “I mean it. I really want to know if I can tell you this story, because it could change your life. Don’t say ‘yes’ lightly.”
She feigned an appropriate moment of deliberation, and then said “yes.” Whatever the story was, she was dying to hear it.
“Okay. There’s this … guy I know. He was a real goof. Good heart, by all accounts, but clumsy, lackadaisical, bit of a slowpoke. When he was 17, he fell in love with this girl. She was really something. Far better than him, but he was too dumb to know it.”
She smiled. This sounded like a good story. “What was she like?”
“Like you, a little. And a lot like … Dr. Mizuno,” he said, shaking his head. “She had the same spirit as her too. So good and kind.”
“And did she return his affection?”
“Y’know, it was the darndest thing, but yeah, she did. So, this clueless guy was very happy. Oh, how he loved her. He courted her for a while, and then he got this crazy idea in his head: ‘I ought to ask her to marry me.’ Like I said, he was just too stupid to know any better, so he did. But she said ‘yes.’ And the guy was very happy. So about eight months later they got married. And he was happier than ever. And then a month or so later, she was pregnant, and then later they found out it was going to be a little girl. And they were both so happy. She told him so, many times. And then, just a little bit after that …”
He paused and Hotaru suddenly sense the difficult turn the story was about to take by the way his face darkened, and the élan left his voice.
“… He lost her. Lost them both.”
“How?” she whispered.
“Doesn’t really matter. They were gone. Just like that.”
But her expression begged for an answer.
“Killed in an … attack. She was the daughter of an ambassador. He was on a mission, and, even though she was close to term, she was with him because she was very gifted with languages. He died, too. Only a few of us were killed that day. But they were among the dead. That’s what was so hard, so shocking about it. It had been a long time since any of us …”
He smiled. He needed to be more careful here. For Hotaru’s part, the strangeness of what he was saying didn’t matter to her at all. It was interesting and she believed every word of it, but they could have been talking about a baseball game for all that mattered.
“… well, anyway.”
“And … he … wasn’t there?”
“No. He couldn’t protect her. Couldn’t die with her. Couldn’t say good bye. Nothing.”
“So what happened to … him?”
“He grew up,” Kuryakin said a bit too loudly and sternly, as he raised himself up in the driver’s seat. Then his voice softened again and, leaning into the steering wheel, he continued: “Oh, he mourned her for a long time, wandered aimlessly for a long time, like a wounded animal. One night, he really came to the end of it. He wished he could die, so he could go be with her. Then, in a delirium, brought on by malnutrition, he had a vision. It happened in a place that looks just like this. It’s uncanny, how closely this view resembles that place. Anyway, in the vision, she came to him. She told him …”
Finally, with a sigh, he threw off any pretense about whom he was speaking.
“… she told me … that she loved me, and she said that I’d had made her happier than I could possibly know. She meant that. I made her that happy. Imagine that. And then she begged me to let go of her, and to go out and become the very best I could at what I was meant to be. I didn’t know what that meant, but because I loved her so much, I did what she said. I’ve been doing that ever since. They say I’m the very best at what I do …”
“What is it you do?” she jumped in.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t tell you that. Maybe someday, I can. I don’t know. In time, maybe I can tell you everything. Anyway … if I am the best at what I do, it’s because she made me what I am. Maybe it was … the only way. I … achieved mastery, and fulfilled my promise long time ago. But now I know that I refused to let go. Do you know what an Eidolon is?”
“A little. It’s an … idol, a false image, a simulacrum, I think is the word.”
“That’s close enough,” he smiled. “My, it’s been such a pleasure to teach you. I learned best by teaching, and I have learned so much from you. Yes, I made of my wife a false image. She was herself, not anything else. But I did love her so, and that was enough, until I met you, and … her.”
Hotaru gazed at him, showing in her face much of the feeling his hid so completely.
“So you did have a soul friend.”
“Perhaps,” he smiled. “I was in love, and she was taken from me far too soon to find that out. Most likely she was.”
“That’s so sad,” she said, turning to look out the window. “Why do people have to die? Why does anything?”
The questions were rhetorical but Kuryakin responded anyway.
“Love is only surpassing sweet when it is given to something mortal. The secret of ultimate sweetness is bound up with the bitterness of death. In the wrong hands, immortality is the very death of love.”
She looked at him, not quite sure what to make of those statements.
“And it was sweet, Hotaru,” he said, smiling nostalgically. “So sweet, it has kept me going for seven …”
‘Years? Not centuries surely?’ Hotaru wondered.
He smiled again, catching himself. It was so hard to keep anything from this kid. He felt so at ease around her.
“… for so long. Sometimes, I would think I was cursed and I cursed the one who loved me the most. But whenever I started thinking that way, I would remember her, and that warm, sweet light within her, and how happy she said I had made her. That kept me going, until finally her light was within me.”
Hotaru smiled, and he returned it.
“She must have been very special.”
“More special than you may realize,” he said seriously, getting back to the point of this story. “See, here’s the reason I’m telling you this: it’s the part I’d forgotten until just recently; the reason I really need your permission to tell you. Are you sure you want to hear this? Because it could change your life forever, and once I say it, there’s no … unsaying it.”
“When I’m with you, I’m not afraid. Of anything. I want to hear it all,” she said.
He looked at her for several seconds, with an increasingly tender expression on his face. His voice even ‘broke’ a tiny bit as he said “You dear, sweet kid. I … you’re absolutely sure? Once said, there is no …”
“You’ve said that already, and my answer is yes, with all my heart.”
“Okay, in the dream - are you really, really sure?”
She looked like she was either going to scream at him or start crying.
“All right, all right,” he said, clearing his throat, “in the dream, as she turned to leave, I asked her, ‘the little one? Is she with you? Where is she?’ And she turned, smiled very strangely at me, and said, ‘You’ll see. You’ll see.’ And she was gone.”
It took a moment for the uncanny feeling descending on her to trigger a realization of what he was suggesting. “You … you think I am her.”
“So quick,” he smiled. “Now you understand why I’m really not sure this was a good thing to tell you. I truly do not know. It’s just that when you said ‘papa’ the other day, that’s when I remembered that part of the dream. I had completely forgotten it, all these years. I don’t usually forget things, but I never knew the child, and so over time the first part of that vision pushed out the second. Until now. You can’t know how this is messing with my head. What on earth made you say that?”
“I don’t know,” she said after thinking hard. “I guess that, after the way I’d messed everything up, I just couldn’t bear to see you leave … empty handed. I wanted you to know that I cared about you … and thought of you like a papa. It just felt … so right to say it.”
He shook his head in smiling awe of the size of the heart in this little one.
“But what you’re talking about, it’s impossible,” she said, “isn’t it?”
“Impossible?” He paused for a minute and looked as if he was really thinking hard about what he was going to say next. Finally, with a long sigh that gave way to a sly ironical expression he said, “Hotaru-chan, in a world where cute, teen age girls in miniskirts and go-go boots can battle ‘the forces of evil,’ I don’t think the word ‘impossible’ signifies much.”
Her eyes widened in shock, but then she began to laugh.
“So you … know, then?”
“You can observe a lot by watching.”
“You can see my planetary insignia, can’t you?” she said, remembering how strangely he looked at her that first day they met.
“Yes, even now,” he said, staring at the space between her eyes, with the chatoyancy of his eyes even more pronounced than usual. “I saw it the day I met you. Yours was not the first I’d seen though. I saw the first in, of all places, London, on a very beautiful girl with long blond hair. You’re associated with Saturn in some way: a very dark association, given your mythologies; besides that, I’ve seen enough here and there to be getting on with. It’s the little things, Hotaru: the skies blackening supernaturally, weird weather patterns, or the ground shaking and I know it’s not due to tectonic shift -because that feels completely different - and other very, very interesting things. It’s one thing when people talk to their cats; it’s another thing when the cats talk back. You should tell them to be more careful about that. I always end up in interesting places. I’ll admit that I don’t have it all figured out, but I wasn’t in a coma for the seven years I’ve lived in this vicinity.”
“You shouldn’t be able to remember any of that,” she said, puzzled. “We have something that … takes care of that.”
“Really? Well, perhaps I have ‘something’ too. Deep calls unto deep. You,” he said, “are tainted, like me. I could tell from the moment I heard your voice that your life has seen its share of tragedy. I hope you can tell me about it sometime.”
“I will. Right now,” she said, her expression determined. “I can tell you anything, everything. Because you have no fear and you won’t quit being my friend. I’m tired of keeping secrets. They only chain us to our destiny. Destiny is a word people use to cover up the terror that comes with the power to choose. I’m sick of ‘destiny.’ I was born thirteen years ago …”
--------------------------------------------
“Haruka! Michiru!” Setsuna called as she rushed into their room. “Hotaru is gone!”
“What?” Haruka said jumping out of bed.
“She is not in her room,” Setsuna said, somewhat breathlessly. “She is not anywhere I have checked.”
“Have you checked the whole house?”
“Not all of it.”
“Let’s go.”
Chapter 7 –Bloody Sunday
(Part 1b-continuing)
Epigraph:
For love is as strong as death,
and its jealousy is as enduring as the grave.
Love flashes like fire, the very fire of God.
Many waters cannot quench love;
neither can rivers drown it.
- The Song of Songs
Hotaru told Kuryakin all that had happened in her life. She explained the fire that took her mother’s life, and gravely injured her, how her father tried to stitch her back together again using cybernetics and his radical genetics research, and how after that she was but a living death; that her body was mostly machine; how she had no friends, her seizures, her possession by Mistress Nine; how the closest thing she had to a mother was the evil witch, Kaolinite, how her father was possessed, mad, and getting madder.
“We died that day, Kuryakin-sensei. After that, the only good thing that happened to me, was … meeting my anam cara …”
She explained about Chibiusa, and then how Pharaoh Ninety tried to take this world, how she fought back against Mistress Nine, how she saved her anam cara and awoke as Sailor Saturn, the Senshi of Destruction. Then she explained how she’d fought off the invader, though she had begun to destroy the world in the process, and then, with relief and wonder in her voice, she told of how Sailor Moon came into the fight, and saved her and the whole world. The subsequent events were even more interesting to him: how she began again as a baby whole in body, her rapid growth spurts, how she reawakened as Sailor Saturn during the Elysian crisis, how she awoke the other Outer Senshi, Nehellenia’s brief return after being driven from Elysium, and how a mere eight months ago, she had died at the hands of Sailor Uranus in the desperate and ultimately futile ruse to stop Galaxia.
‘My God, it could actually be possible,’ he thought, after hearing this. ‘Dear Thérèse, were you that powerful?’
Objectively, the most interesting, of-the-moment things to Kuryakin were when she explained that she was reborn as a baby, and how Sailor Moon drove Chaos back into “the place it belongs, in the minds of everyone.”
As she continued to tell her tale, Kuryakin’s expression went from great interest to stunned shock at just how many and how terrible were the things that had happened to this girl. By the time she was done, his hand was to his brow as he shook his head in a combination of near disbelief and stunned amazement at the resilience of this incredible girl.
“Hotaru-chan,” he said slowly, after a minute or so of letting it all sink in, “in the last few months there have been moments where I was nearly overwhelmed by a desire to pick you up, and hug you, and tell you that everything would be okay, and that I would protect you from anything that threatened you. Now I know why. Good God, you have had a terrible life.”
“It hasn’t been that bad,” she said shyly. “There have been many good things, too. I like my life now. It’s fairly normal these days. Beside,” she said with a shy smile, “you’ve been hugging me from the moment we met. You remind me of my soul friend in some ways. You’re not afraid of me. You do nice things for me, sweet things, kind things that make me feel loved. You’ve treated me like a person, a confidant, even an equal. You’ve made me feel like I’m not worthless. You really think I could be … someone else? You’d think I would know about it.”
“I know of no way to prove it,” he said, firmly. “All I know is what I feel, and have felt, whenever I was around you. It is, I suppose, something I am beginning to take on faith. Maybe in the end, the perception is all that matters. My heart is toward you, Hotaru-chan. I have to know what happens to you. I have to know.”
She smiled.
“However, it is, remotely possible. You’ve been able to accomplish awakenings for yourself and others. My wife could do that too. She was a little bit older than me. She awoke things in me, even before she died, and if you really are of her, you … well, I don’t know. It seems very farfetched, even for all the things I’ve seen. But from what you’ve said, you have, literally, been reborn as a baby. If by some miracle you are her, then she must have sent you somehow, perhaps as … she … lay dying.” Finally, here, the iron façade covering a pain long dealt with broke just a little and he winced, wiping his eyes. “When so pure a heart makes a wish with all her being … I dunno. Maybe that’s why I’ve always wanted to come here. I knew that something … that someone, was waiting for me here. Anyway, it doesn’t matter to me if it’s true or not. I’d feel just the same. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. I’ll see you again soon. But right now, I’d better get you home, and then … I have to be alone for a bit.”
“You’re pretty hurt, aren’t you?”
“To love at all is put your self at risk, that is, to put yourself in the power of another. I willingly gave Miss Meioh that power over me, and she used it. I wonder, though, at how pain seems magnified here. All pain hurts, but people here must have a strange fondness for it. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so much of it. Perhaps it’s some kind of martyr complex. They think it makes them all tragic and heroic, so they milk it for all it’s worth. I’m taking it harder than I thought, and I’m a little worried about it.”
“Kuryakin-sensei, you could just say ‘yes, I’m hurt.’”
He chuckled. “Defensive mechanisms, I suppose. But don’t blame Miss Meioh for this.”
“You’re being too kind,” she said moodily.
“Please. You can’t force these things, Hotaru-chan. What if you were secretly pining for someone, and one of your guardians tried to set you up with someone else? You’d resist it. A woman’s heart is her own. Miss Meioh is an enigma far more puzzling than any I’ve ever encountered … aside from being a tall, dark, beautiful goddess I have desperately longed to seize in my arms from the moment I saw her.”
She loved hearing him talk of her Setsuna-momma that way. In their respective ways, they both clearly saw the same things in her. “You could see her insignia, too,” she said, as she began to laugh. “It’s just so funny that you knew all along. The whole point of hiring you was so I wouldn’t have to go to any special doctors who might figure out who I am.”
“So, the point of hiring me was to solve your problem without anyone, who didn’t already know who you were, finding out. Well, it worked, didn’t it? Sort of,” he smiled, as she laughed some more. “That explains Miss Meioh’s ‘no prying’ rule. You’re called the Sela Senshi, right?”
Hotaru nodded.
“Truthfully, I don’t know a whole lot. I’ve seen those others from afar, and I hadn’t realized Ami Mizuno was one of them, until I was reacquainted with her at the dolphinarium. She wasn't one when back when she went to my cram school. Quite a change in her. The moment I met you, I thought, oh, more of them, how fun! I didn’t know you four, exactly, but I had been poking around and it is funny that one day, out of the blue, you all just walked right up to me. Didn’t see that coming. And I sure didn’t expect … what’s happened since.”
“I wondered if you hadn’t stared at Setsuna-momma a bit too long. It wasn’t just because you could see her insignia, was it?”
“Your insignias aren’t the only thing I can see, but no. I didn’t even see hers until we were sitting down. I was too busy seeing everything else. She has such a stunning presence … so mature, and statuesque, and that oh-so-beautiful face. I’ve never seen anyone like her. I was floored, right then and there. So she’s associated with Pluto in some way. Another very dark association, but even so I’m still in love with her. She must have duties of some sort I imagine, and her own hopes. I interfere with that, I guess.”
“It must have driven you nuts that day she called to tell she’d be staying late at school, and was going to have dinner with one of her professors.”
“Ooooh,” he said, feigning collapse, “Hotaru-chan, you can’t know how little sleep I’ve been running on for the last four months. She has thrown me off my routine in every way. I don’t know what’s holding me together right now.”
“You’ve nothing to worry about there,” Hotaru said loftily. “Later on, that professor made a pass at her. He’s her college guidance advisor and she was not happy about it.”
“Really?” he said. “Well, now you know why. She’s been pining for someone else.”
“She can never have him. She knows that,” Hotaru replied sulkily, as they got back to the point. It was amazing how easily she accepted this grave breach of secrecy. It was almost like she had known he was aware from the beginning.
“Yes, I believe you and her. So there must be some reason she continues to …”
“That’s what’s making me so mad,” she interrupted, moodily. “Why can’t she do what you’ve done, and accept someone else in place of … ”
“You say too much, Hotaru-chan. She has her reasons, you can be sure of it. A woman like her probably has more reasons than we can know. There is something about her, some key to understanding her, that I haven’t figured out and even you haven’t fully realized. You and I both were walking in a minefield, and didn’t know it. We’ve set off a few. I think she’s unsettled, pretty badly now. That’s kind of why I walked away from her the other night. I am in love with her, but I didn’t want to unsettle her any further.”
“Maybe that’s what she needs,” Hotaru mused.
“Tough call for anyone but her to make,” he retorted. “Love is a wonderful thing. It’s also a terrible thing, a jealous, zealous thing. All the better poetry understands that:
Love is sharper than stones or sticks;
Lone as the sea, and deeper blue;
Loud in the night as a clock that ticks;
Longer-lived than the Wandering Jew.
Show me a love was done and through,
Tell me a kiss escaped its debt!
Son, to your death you'll pay your due -
Women and elephants never forget.
Hotaru smiled. “Who was that?”
“Dorothy Parker, the Ballad of Unfortunate Mammals. Y’know,” he said wistfully, “I gave her every chance to pull away, but in the end, I couldn’t stop. There’s something about her. She looked like she hadn’t been … appreciated … or kissed in a long time, or even ever, and I guess I was right. If she can’t have who she wants, maybe she’s hurting too. Maybe she is holding on to an impossible hope as a kind of insulation against something. Just a thought. Now we’ve messed all that up, and all in the name of the different loves both of us feel for her. Try to see it from her point of view before you judge too harshly. You should try to help her. She’s a very good person. She loves you.”
“You still love her,” Hotaru sighed, quietly happy and amazed. “You love her so much I can feel it.”
“Of course, Hotaru-chan. I’ve made my choice and I’ve got to stick with it to the bitter end. Irrevocability is what puts the romance in romantic. There’s a dearth of romance in this world because so many people quit when the going gets rough. I’m no quitter. Not anymore, anyway.”
“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever seen,” Hotaru smiled, wanting to encourage him.
“Hotaru-chan, after what I’ve heard, I feel the same way about you. So,” he said with emphasis as he put the van in gear, “when I take you back home now, I’m going to ask you to show some of that strength. Even if you’re right, you need to apologize- to everyone. What I learned from that vision of my wife is that whatever happens, we never know the whole story. We must do the best we can, and in the meantime, you will either learn to make good of it, or you’ll be trapped in the tragedy of it forever. Forgiveness is not an option. It is life.”
Hotaru smiled at that. “If Usagi-chan were a bit better with words, I bet she’d say the same thing.”
“Usagi-chan? Who’s that?”
“Oh, just … somebody that reminds me of you,” she laughed. “If you ever meet her, you’ll know why the comparison is so funny.”
“Hmmm,” Kuryakin said, eying her warily, “did you tell me her name on purpose?”
“Maybe. Deeps calls unto deep.”
“She must be that Sela Muun, then. I wish I’d found you … sooner,” he sighed. “If you’re who I think you are or not, you have a purpose here.
“I know my purpose, and it’s a terrible one.”
“Well, Senshi of Destruction, perhaps it only looks that way right now. There may be a time where you will see the other side of it.”
“I’ve seen the other side of it,” Hotaru sighed. “What I want to see is the end of it.”
“And that,” he smiled, “is exactly why, your Cold Look notwithstanding, you are not bad. I’m sure of it. Whatever has happened to you, and what whatever will, whatever you’ve done, and whatever you will do, never doubt that.”
“So how can you see these things? Where are you from? Really?” asked Hotaru as she took note that they were moving, but he was driving very slowly. He had missed her something fierce, and she had missed him too. Both knew this had to be brief –Miss Meioh and Kittens must be out of their minds- yet neither wanted it to end.
“Hotaru-chan, you’ve told me many things you probably shouldn’t, and I am grateful for that,” he said. “I promise you I will guard your secrets with my very life. But the experiences of my life have given me a profound respect for unintended consequences. I can’t tell you that much about me, just yet. Let me think it over. I’m not at my best right now, but … in time, I’ll try to reciprocate.”
“After all the strange things I’ve told you,” she said quizzically, “what could possibly be so strange and complicated about you that you can’t tell me?”
“What, indeed.”
“Please don’t give up on her,” she pleaded.
“Insofar as it lies with me, I’ve promised I won’t. However, in this case, it’s not entirely up to me. It takes two to tango, and Miss Meioh’s dance card doesn’t seem to have any openings on it, just now. There can come a point where it is foolishness to keep holding on. There can even come a point of ‘dialectical reversal’, where you begin to undo the things for which you remained true in the first place.”
Hotaru frowned a bit.
“Why does this mean so much to you, Hotaru-chan? Have you had a ‘seeing’ about something?”
“I can’t remember,” she said, frustration etched into her very troubled expression. “But something about this … sigh … whatever happens, I want you in my life, Kuryakin-sensei. Always.”
“Then nothing will stop me,” he said matter-of-factly. “That I can promise. I always completely let go of my students in the hope that I made a difference in their lives, and that in time, maybe one or two of them will realize it and remember me, and call me some day to tell me how they’re doing. Only a few ever have, and fewer still more than once or twice. I think you would have in any case. Makes me happy to hear you say that.”
“Will you promise to check with me, before you give up?” she asked plaintively.
“Okay, I’ll promise that much, if you’ll promise me you’ll apologize to them.”
“I will, but maybe not tonight.”
“Okay. I understand.”
“I just know that she is fascinated by you in some way,” she said, as he turned the van onto her driveway. “She’s so devoted, she never seeks out anything for herself anymore. Did you know what she was doing?”
“I had a pretty good idea she was deceiving me,” he said.
“I’ve thought about it and I don’t think really was. There were moments when she enjoyed the feeling of ‘having someone.’ She may have thought that was what she was doing. She may have felt like it was her duty to deceive you … well us, really. I think she intended to lead you on for a plausible amount of time and then try to end it amicably, but you were getting to her. You were touching her heart far more than even she had realized. She had to end it quickly or she could not have stopped … how she felt.”
“Really? Well. That’s a hopeful thought. Thank you, Hotaru-chan. I’ll try to call you in a week or so. Or you can call me. You have my number. But give me a week.”
She nodded.
“You really think I could be your …”
“Hotaru, I truly do not know. I really shouldn’t have told you, but it’s very hard for me to … hold anything back from you. Anyway, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
‘No, you won’t; you’ve fallen far too hard for her,’ Hotaru thought as the house came into full view. ‘And now I know what you’ve given up in allowing it. She won’t be just fine either. I know it. I’ve got do something, and I can’t do anything, if there is something between us. He’s right. I’ve got to apologize. But not tonight, not yet.’
To show good faith, he parked the van in front of the house, and honked the horn. Past her, he could see the front door of the house opening and Setsuna emerging as The Kittens came running around each side of the house. They looked anxious, except for Tomboy Kitten, who looked angry and started running toward them, until Princess Kitten barked something loudly and she pulled up.
“Yeah, we’re in trouble,” he said with a resigned smile. “Don’t forget your promise. Those are the people you have to live with. You need to be at peace with them.”
“I know.”
“Hotaru, help her, if she needs it. I’m begging, okay? Help her, because I can’t, and I wish I could.”
She nodded, then opened the door and got out.
“You really are something else, Hotaru-chan,” he said for everyone to hear. He drove off. She walked resolutely through everyone and into the house.
“Hotaru,” Setsuna called after her. Hotaru wheeled around.
“I am going to bed,” she said in a voice that brooked no further discussion. Unless someone was willing to force the issue, this miserable day was mercifully over.
Chapter 7 –Bloody Sunday
(Part 2)
Epigraphs:
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment …
– C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
… the broad truth is that barbarism and civilization have always dwelt side by side in the world the civilization sometimes spreading to absorb the barbarians, sometimes decaying into relative barbarism, … man does not necessarily begin with despotism because he is barbarous, but very often finds his way to despotism because be is civilized. He finds it because he is experienced; or, what is often much the same thing, because he is exhausted.
… Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other.
-G.K. Chesterton,
Hotaru sat at the table, moody looking and very uncommunicative. Except ...
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