1"Never think that war, no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime" - Ernest Hemingway.
Empty Remains
Happy endings can only exist in fairy tales…
Zakuro Fujiwara had known this for almost her entire life… But, apparently, there were always new methods of comprehending what was already understood…
Or maybe life, destiny or whatever it flowed through the lines of a person's existence had a liking for teaching lessons several times, cutting them into the flesh rather than burn it just once… When the wound seemed to be healing into a scar, again the steel came to tear it open, leaving the blood running.
Until said lesson was sliced into the nerves themselves.
The soft wind of the night caressed her face, making her close her eyes, long pas the point of trying to stop her brain and senses from absorbing all the information in the form of scents that others could not feel.
That other humans couldn't, shouldn't, feel.
"Once you've won this war, you all will return to normal" Those words echoed in her mind in colors of curse. Zakuro almost snickered as she gazed at the full moon, allowing her thoughts to run free, knowing better than to try chaining them. No matter what, they would always run free, especially in late hours such as now. In the end, it was better to accept them than to waste energy trying to stop them.
After all, what difference did it make, right?
Her steps ceased and she leaned her arms on the stone rail, looking down at the river running under the bridge. The moonlight was devoured by the dark waters that returned nothing. Her reflection was but a quivering shadow, barely perceptive… Something that was trying to remember its form and couldn't keep even the basic of it for long before crumbling down…
Strangely appropriated…
Trees and grass laid on the other side of the river, under the veil of silver light. Beyond, the city lights became pale, dots along the darker shadows of the buildings that denounced the presence of life.
People…
They could all be dead and they wouldn't even know it… Nor care… All that would be left would be the larvae feasting on their flesh… And so what?
"How many months has it been?" Zakuro didn't know for certain and her mind was not willing to search for the answer. After winning the war against the aliens, time had eventually stopped to matter. She had no words into which force what had happened to form an accurate description. It had been slowly, a disease that made it rot while luring the mind into a dull sense and when you realized what had happened, you just couldn't care anymore.
Days and nights, one following the other. A cycle with no end and no real meaning. The sun rise, go down and rise again… The moon would disappear and reappear…
It was just a repetition…
"And it would have carried on even if humanity had died…"
Nothing would have changed, if she bothered to return her attention to those whispers coming from the corner of her mind. It was the truth. The universe wouldn't have even blinked… Humans, in their infinite hubris, gave themselves more importance than what was deserved… The world would have carried on as it had been doing, life would just continue…
Hadn't several species perished over the course of the ages, anyway?
And those people that were now laughing in their homes or watching TV or doing whatever people did nowadays, would be dead in some years and forgotten in less than fifty, as if they had never even been alive…
Humans carried on as if nothing had happened.
The world carried on as if nothing had happened.
The world would have carried on either way…
So… Nothing changed. And if nothing changed, what difference did their actions make?
What if they had won?
Not that Zakuro missed the battles, of course… The memory of each one of them was alive in her flesh even now, the only thing that could now live in her and with the details of nightmares born in reality… To wake up everyday uncertain if she would return home… Seeing people without knowing if it would be for the last time… Her senses constantly alert for any attack, until every noise was enough to make a wave of energy pierce her nerves… Not knowing where to go when she reflected about how the aliens were fighting to save their people and being assaulted by a sort of guilt until there was no more certainty that she was doing the right thing…
And looking at the face of her (friends?) fighting companions, Zakuro saw similar feelings… And became all the more aware of how she hadn't had friends since years ago, after being burnt enough to prefer the solace of solitude and now she feared losing more than her life and… And…
No.
Zakuro didn't miss this… And that was not mentioning the terror of the battles themselves.
When she had joined the "mews", Zakuro had been unsure of what to expect but long and painful fights… Despite how she and the others would face their enemies, the fear was always present. They were just five teenagers with no knowledge of any military tactic or methods of fighting, against aliens who had technology which humans could barely dream about and who probably had trained for years…
For a second, Zakuro wanted to laugh, but her body was to weary to remember how to and a bitter taste came to her mouth…
After all… They couldn't truly be called "just" teenagers.
"Not anymore"
At least not human teenagers, considering the change Shirogane had imposed on them. She was not sure how the genetic infusion with animal DNA had been able to present them with abilities beyond the physical enhancement. The word "powers" still carried fading sensations of childhood games and heroes of comic books, being almost too childish for her to use it without feeling silly, but considering the weapons they could invoke and the attacks, Zakuro had to admit there was no other denomination.
Who cared? The result was there, right?
It remained alive until today…
They had "won" alright... And by some miracle, maybe some divine mercy, they had achieved what could be called a "happy ending". No one had died. No one had lost. They had saved humanity and the aliens had now a mean to save their people…
If this was a story, it would certainly have ended with "And they all lived happily ever after"…
But this was not a story.
Those would always become dust when trying to force their existence in reality.
And there was the "after". There always was an "after".
Her eyes sought the point where moonlight drowned, surrounded by slow waves that could be made of oil rather than actual water… Yet, Zakuro imagined it would be nice to be rocked into sleep like this. Despite everything, she had always thought the river to be far more beautiful at night.
"What's left to know is where this comes from… The human side or the animal?" Maybe this was the wrong way of presenting the question, if it carried enough importance to warrant such treatment. Most likely, there was no "side of this" or "side of that", only a marriage of both with no lines to keep them made her… What? She didn't know the answer and had already given up philosophizing about her form of existence…
Living it was more than enough.
Closing her eyes, she whispered an old song to herself.
The glamour's gone
The shades are down
And Tokyo is only a lonely town
Lonely
Oh, lonely… Yes… That was quite a word, was it not?
Her senses, neither purely human or purely wolf, dissected the night and its scents. Trees, cars, people who had crossed the bridge and left a trail, flowers, a sleeping squirrel on a tree… Her hearing caught even the waving of the river, the hoot of an owl…
It was not the first time she ventured out in late hours… Sleep did not find her easily anymore and nightmares took joy in waking her… Perhaps it wasn't such a surprise she had taken to walking on the streets, especially on that particular bridge then.
Ryou had told them, had all but swore, the animal's genes would weaken and, eventually, disappear by lack of use since they would have no need to fight anymore…
What an idiocy…
And they… Naives, hopeless naives… Had believed it.
When love's a laugh
And you're the clown
Then Tokyo is only another town
Dreary
She hugged herself, her flesh waking with a shiver although there was no cold. Yet, it was somewhat of a comfort to know her connections were alive enough to shiver… They had all believed those pretty words, seeing them as a comfort for when forced to face whatever they had become… Oh, what difference it made what they had or not believed, thought and done? The result would always, always, always be the same, so those "hows" and "whys" could very well go to Hell…
God, she was weary…
There was no going back.
There never was any sort of "going back"…
There was no such thing as "going back to normal"…
And whatever the "normal" they had been allowed to keep had also been eroded by time… Or perhaps it had been already destroyed, only the ruins still standing enough to give them a false sense of serenity during the first… Days? Months?
There was not even what to go back to.
The animal DNA was as dominant as before, sure, but were not the actual focal point of everything… It was something of which magnitude didn't fit one word, only sounds of the heartbeat.
For the loveless clown
This town's a weary merry-go-round
And round
And round
The first days had been good… If questioned, Zakuro wouldn't lie… They had been good, yes… The relief, the joy, the feeling of… Victory? No, in a strange way, such feeling would be wrong… This was a healthier and purer feeling, of having done something good and right…
Every time they could, the girls would get together to talk or just hang out, knowing (relishing) that they no longer had to fear an attack, they could just relax and live. And they had been decided to live life at its maximum…
Mint had dedicated herself more than never to dance, her wish of becoming a great ballerina as burning as before… Other activities had called her attention (charity, mostly), due to a desire of keep doing things that could make a difference… Lettuce had grown more confident and often talked about professions that had started to appeal to her, although she wasn't even near the last year of high school… Pudding had decided to continue working in order to sustain her family while their father didn't come back, but she was enjoying the "vacation" to spend more time with her siblings… Ryou and Keiichiro had decided to keep the café open, which was a well-received news by Zakuro and the others… And why not? That place could no longer be their disguised "headquarters", but it was still theirs. Maybe it was only cheap sentimentalism, but it was special…
And of course, there was still the other one entangled in that fight… Masaya Aoyama…
He and Ichigo went out when they could, enjoying even what could be taken as a simple thing after having escaped that nightmare. Zakuro and the others knew they had witnessed each other coming too close of death, the terror of Masaya revealing himself to be no more than a second personality of a being whose cruelty went beyond all they knew and Ichigo sacrificing her life for him… No one could forget those few minutes the girl had remained still, pale as a corpse… It was only natural that the two lovers would spend more time together than ever…
And she? She had continued with her career, dividing her time between it and her friends, often joining Mint in charities, a new relief in her system…
There had been more happiness than before.
But it hadn't be meant to last…
The chestnut
The willow
The colors of Kenjiro
Turn to gray, gray hues
Had that darkness always been present? Only hiding in wait and they had been just too blind by euphoria to realize it? Or had it been something that had come be born insidiously, like a disease?
In a way or another, it had come, blooming inside them as rotten roses…
Zakuro ran her hand through the hair, craving her claws in the flesh of the scalp. There had been a time ago when she would have torn it apart if it meant being able to expel those thoughts from her along with blood…
Her eyes went to the sky wondering, not for the first time, if the aliens would be feeling something similar…
"Improbable…" She thought, snorting at the idea. No doubt they had their own scars, but likely differing in nature…
"When you win, everything will be back to normal."
There were still times when she would wake up and, in those seconds between sleep and awareness, and wonder "Is it today that I'll die? Is it today that I'll die?" as it tended to happen before.
Everything they had fought for wasn't there anymore… Time had showed them this…
The band playing Kaneko
Along the Ueno
Sounds like way-down blues
Lettuce no longer found pleasure in making dolls… Day by day, it didn't seem as much fun anymore, like a game she was outgrowing. One would expect so to bring feelings of sadness, but Lettuce had realized that she just… She just didn't care either. Even the prospect of colleges and careers, which had excited her for a while had lost its appear, none provoking any real interest, so she had decided she would just… Pick any of them when the time came and that would be it.
Purin still had efforts to make for her siblings, still wanted to be there for them in order to prevent feelings of loneliness from approaching them… However, such was inevitable. They would grow up, reach the age when they would wonder why their father, so soon after their mother's death, had left. Despite the several ramifications, the possibilities that life still offered, there was no way to protect them from suffering and feelings of abandonment.
Zakuro often gave money to help the younger one, but the root of the problems was far beyond such material things… Frequently, Zakuro wondered how deeply Purin had been affected by the war… She was only ten… She never talked about the subject, her hesitation taking less than weeks to develop into a full refusal.
Mint still danced, but those who knew her well could see that she had lost the flame that used to move her… The stars in her eyes were gone. Not that others seemed to take notice. Her parents were still too involved with their own lives to remember they had a daughter, not a doll, and although her brother had vowed to try to be there for her as he should, those had proved to be empty words. Mint had looked quite pale the last time they had met and had not eaten anything…
Not that any of them had…
And, of course, there was the "couple" of the group…
Ichigo and Masaya had broken up.
Tokyo is a lonely
Dreary
Oh, so lonely town
Back when Ichigo had delivered the news, they all were still trying, in the way fools do, to keep the past alive. The cat girl had never gone into details of the reasons behind the break-up, perhaps also too numb by them to find a purpose on it, only making it clear that it had been a decision of both. And had left it at that…
Even so, Zakuro was the eldest of the group in several aspects and she had a pretty good idea of what had happened… It didn't take much knowledge regarding the mechanisms of the heart and its reactions to broken pieces, this was the same that had been happening to her and the others…
Masaya had been a personality of the one who had incited that war. Maybe they could use it as an argument that he couldn't be held on account for Deep Blue's actions, it wasn't his fault. They understood this well enough, but the terror refused to die…
It was a secret.
That whole war was a secret. People could know the existence of the Tokyo Mew Mews, but they had never been privy to its details, to how much was at stake. They understood it in the way a child understands the basics of a certain subject. They hadn't known where they had come from, why the aliens were here or how close they had been of dying… Ichigo had commented that many of her school had reacted with certain curiosity and enthusiasm to the idea of heroes, even discussing the one the liked the most…
It had been interesting at first, even flattering in a way…
This had died long before the last battle, though. In a sense, it was as if people didn't understand they were in the center of a war. Even now, Zakuro doubted they did… Just like they didn't know how close they had been of dying.
She looked at the buildings beyond the trees. The pale lights were like fireflies. Homes. Families. They looked like they could be crushed, but not truly touched, lying beyond a veil of liquid glass…
That entire war and the truth behind it resumed in that: A secret.
Friends and lovers had secrets, maybe even needed them, but this wasn't a pleasant one. It was too cold to be touched, too sharp to be held and it burned what had once united them and suffocated affection… It crossed everything to venture into realms where logic didn't exist and sanity was a dream.
And often, far too often, when they were together that thing was among them. The chimeras they had fought against. The wounds. The fear. The state of their own bodies. There were times when Zakuro looked at Lettuce or Mint and, for a brief second, remembered a wound almost to the point of seeing the flesh sliced… And she knew the others could see that in her face was well.
God knew how sometimes the smell of blood was strong enough to leave her minds, becoming real… And maybe the worse was when they looked in the mirror that was the eyes of each other and saw the truth.
They saw themselves.
Where's that shining flower
'neath the Tokyo Tower?
Where's that fairyland of gold?
Friends and lovers did not always live happily ever after despite being victorious against the adversities…
It was months since they had last saw each other… Zakuro called from time to time, sent e-mails… But even so…
As for Ryou and Keiichiro, she could no longer bring herself to care about them, and had stopped trying… Even if Ryou had had his reasons, even if his actions had been to save humanity (or to avenge his parents?), Zakuro could not forgive him. Warriors? Hopes of humankind? The youngest of their group was only ten years and she was sixteen. And now, what they had before them was a life of knowing they would forever be on a line between human and animal, being both and none at the same time…
And carrying that secret, that dirty and cancerous secret…
Isn't it a pity that this magic city
Turned suddenly cold?
During battles, they had found a purpose for that anomaly. There was some irony to be found in this, if her body could remember how to be touched by such… It had been a little help, to keep the sanity and certain thoughts more at bay for even without fights, they were no heroes or warriors… They were, in the end, merely results of games with DNA…
The last time she had saw Keiichiro, it had been in a bar…. They had talked briefly, Zakuro aware that long ago, if things hadn't taken the paths they had, she would have loved Keiichiro and it hurt her to see him in such state, skinny under worn out clothes, red eyes, mumbling apologies as he gave away a strong smell of alcohol…
And she? She wasn't in a better situation…
There was no more happiness to be found for her… The lack of true pleasure had reflected itself in a professional degradation until, in order to save what was left of her reputation and pride, Zakuro had announced that she was stressed and needed a vacation… After all, she needed her sustain. Keep any pathetic form of life she had left…
Such "vacation" time had been filled with unwanted remembrances of the mask she had wore since childhood, forced to smile and pretend sympathy no matter if she was screaming inside, then growing used to it. It had been useful in the following years, with the need of avoiding the media's fangs while knowing how to play the darker side of fame's game.
When she returned, she had been gloriously received and had fooled everyone again. No one would ever know how that mask weighted more than never.
There was no reason. No purpose to carry on with this. Each time Zakuro looked around, that feeling grew… Everything was so ephemeral, so insignificant…
So pathetic.
The chimneys moan
The river cries
Each glamorous bridge
Is a bridge of sighs
Her agent had welcomed her back while pretending to worry about her state when in truth, he was merely thinking in how much more money he could obtain with Zakuro Fujiwara… Was he aware that he would die someday? He would smile without knowing that his body was already dying and each second of life was merely a second closer to death… Maybe he was even already rotting inside with some disease eating him away and just didn't know…
Zakuro had kept smiling.
Photographers, fans… People in the street… Carrying on with their lives, unaware that they had almost been exterminated as bugs… And she could very well imagine those people dead… And it wouldn't make any difference. They wouldn't know they were dead or why. How would it feel like? A glowing light and then death?
What difference did that make?
River, river
Won't you be my lover?
Don't turn me down
She took a deep breath, closing her eyes… Maybe if it rained… She would feel cleaner… Lighter…
She leaned her arms in the rail, eyes seduced by the river…
A small smile was born. The movement felt somewhat unpleasant to the muscles, unused to a gesture of sincerity…
But she had always thought the river to be more beautiful at the night…
For Tokyo
Is such a lonely
Lonely... Town
News of Tokyo Night, reporter Natsuko Shido.
"The identification of the body found was confirmed as Zakuro Fujiwara's, 16, renowned model and actress. Her body was the third found on the river this morning and the counts reach five, all young girls. The police admitted not knowing yet if those cases are connected and though there is an apparent lack of defense wounds, the possibility of homicide has not been excluded. The investigation is…"
To those who want to know, yes, Zakuro was not the only one to commit suicide, all mews did it. Scars of wars can never truly heal and they were all too young to deal with the burden, along with the fact that they lost their humanity.
The song used is "Paris is a Lonely Town", sung by Judy Garland. However, I made some changes to fit better with Tokyo (I tried to at least make decent rhymes):
- "The chestnut /The willow/ The colors of Kenjiro" originally is "The chestnut /The willow/ The colors of Utrillo". Utrillo is a reference to Maurice Valadon, born in 1883 and a French painter.
I changed to Kenjiro due to Kenjiro Nomura, a Japanese American painter. The chestnut and willow trees, as far as I know, exist in Japan (if not, then I was misinformed) and there is a nice contrast as in Japan, chestnut trees represent success and hard times, mastery and strength while the willow trees usually represent sadness.
- The band playing Kaneko/ Along the Ueno originally is "The band playing vyse/ Along the Champs Elysees". I have absolutely NO idea what they meant by "vyse" (tried to search for it, found nothing that explained). "Kaneko" is for Hitomi Kaneko, a Japanese classical composer.
"Champs Elysees" is a famous avenue while Ueno is a reference to Tokyo Ueno Park.
I confess this was the hardest verse to change, nothing that I found rhymed, so in the end, I went with this… And I'm still not happy.
- Where's that shining flower/ 'neath the Tokyo Tower? This one is quite obvious. In the original, it's the Eiffel Tower.
Well, that's it! As always, English is not my first language and if you notice any mistake I made, please, please tell me! Also, tell me what you think, reviews and critiques are more than welcome!