Because my dreams are bursting at the seams ...
Title: The Future Perfect
Day/Theme: November 20- "lost in a dream from which I can't awaken"
Series: Konjiki no Gash Bell!!
Characters: Kiyomaro
Rating: G
Timeline: Post-series. Heavy on references to chapter 276 specifically, as well as the events in the 2nd movie, "Attack of the Mechavulcan!!"
----
Only Sunbeam-san had asked. He had waited until after the portal closed, after final echoes of thunder had died down, and after the others had turned their attention elsewhere. Perhaps Megumi-san and Folgore hadn't thought ask. Or perhaps they didn't want to know.
"That demon, Dr. M2 ... he was from the future, right?" Sunbeam-san had nailed those intense green eyes on him, and Kiyomaro, as always, found himself transfixed. Though he had stood toe to toe with idols and pop stars, company presidents and mad geniuses, armed robbers and thugs, it was really only Sunbeam-san who could consistently make Kiyomaro feel all of his fourteen years ... and how short that span really was. "Did you ask him who the victor of the battle was?"
Startled, Kiyomaro had nearly dropped his backpack. A quick glance to the others showed that they hadn't noticed, nor were they listening. "No," he had said. "I didn't. I only asked if the trial to become king still continued ..."
Sunbeam tilted his head to side.
"He was a total loon," Kiyomaro elaborated. "He said he didn't have an interest in such things."
"Why didn't you ask the question with the most direct answer? Why didn't you ask the name of the king?" Sunbeam-san's voice never lost its neutrality. His expression was serene.
Afterwards, Kiyomaro would always remember just how calm Sunbeam-san seemed even when adding what seemed like the weight of the world into those words.
"I ... don't know."
But that was a lie, back then.
***
It was the growing ache in his fingers that finally made Kiyomaro put down the screwdriver and blink hazily at his bedside clock. Four am in the morning?! It was easier to lose track of time, he noted, now that the room was his alone.
Kiyomaro stretched high towards the ceiling, yawning as he did so. The phosphorescent light hummed above him as he curled and uncurled his fingers, one by one, trying to work out the tightness in each digit. On the table, a sea of springs and gears radiated outward like the petals of a metal flower.
(Had he really been working for four hours? He could've sworn it was only thirty minutes. Without a whiny little voice asking him if he was going to bed yet, unu!, sometimes it took the soft grey light of morning before he'd remembered that yes, while working was important, perhaps sleep was too.)
Kiyomaro pushed up out of the chair, wincing slightly as his legs protested the sudden rush of blood. He was careful to not jostle the project on the table.
The house sat silently on its foundation; his mother had gone to bed hours ago. She'd probably yell at him if she knew he was still up. He could almost hear her voice dipping into the familiar curving tones as she nagged.
It was rather annoying, Kiyomaro reflected, how he had internalized so many voices in his head. Perhaps a sign of early onset of insanity?
Naah, he chuckled internally. Probably went insane a LONG time ago before this ...
As he made his way down the hallway, Kiyomaro balanced on the balls of his feet to reduce the sound of his steps. He automatically avoided the fifth stair down as well.
(The staircase had never quite been the same after Brago and Sherri's first visit. At the end of the battle, the demon world had promised that the human world would be returned to its original, pristine stage. Nothing should have remained, save for the memories. Yet, Kiyomaro swore that certain steps still creaked arthritically and that his bedroom still felt a little drafty when the wind blew through a once-destroyed wall.)
Down in the kitchen, Kiyomaro opened the door to stare at the depressingly full fridge, stocked with everything from pudding cups to the leftovers from their steamed fished dinner. (Just when, exactly, had a full fridge become depressing, Kiyomaro wondered.)
Pulling out the carton of milk, he shook it idly. Most of the milk was nearly gone. Shrugging, he opened the carton and drank it straight from the lip. In the window above the sink, he could see the full round weight of the moon.
Foregoing the kitchen table, Kiyomaro slid down to sit and lean against the closed fridge door. The coolness of the floor seeped through his pajama pants and the drip from the faucet completed the quiet ambiance. A silent night, in a quiet town, with nothing but the moonlight and his own thoughts for company.
I wonder if it's night where Gash is?
Truth was, such late nights were pretty rare, considering. Kiyomaro had initially been surprised at how easy it was to sleep at night. In the months after Gash's victory, all he had to do was slide between the waiting sheets and then it'd be morning. He didn't even dream at night anymore, nor were there any more nightmares about losing the battle, losing Gash, or just losing himself.
He found the rhythm of high school life rather easy to adjust to as well; he had always thought he'd be bored. What was Advanced Calculus in comparison to blowing up and/or saving the world (sometimes both at the same time?)
However, despite any and all predictions, his days still were as full as they had been when Gash was around; Suzume dropped by nearly daily (and nearly always in tears about the school work that had piled up during the day.) Yamanaka still came by to goad him into playing baseball, Kanayama was still searching for that damn Tsuchinoko (and insisting that Kiyomaro carry the net), and Iwashima ... well, at least Iwashima had taken a transfer student position in the United States (New Mexico, Kiyomaro believed), but he still sent increasingly bizarre post cards. More puzzlingly, the odd guy from his eighth grade class also dropped by constantly, moaning about morning glories. (The guy was rather disturbing, Kiyomaro thought privately, but he welcomed him all the same.)
And then there were the letters he received from around the world. Italy, England, France, Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam, China ... the bulletin board he had put up in his room had filled quickly, so he had to resort to taping them to his walls.
He'd have to tack them on the ceiling soon.
And of course, there was that one letter. Gash's letter. The one he kept separate on his bookcase, where he kept his most important work.
Kiyomaro took another long swig of milk. His days weren't really silent or lifeless or without color. It wasn't as full of all three, of course, as when Gash was around. Gash, after all, was nothing if not loud, lively, and colorful.
Kiyomaro would be lying if he said he didn't miss that ...but what he felt wasn't anything like the feeling of loss. (He knew that feeling well enough to give it a personal definition beyond words in a dictionary. Unlike before, he now knew many things beyond the definition of books -- and for the most part, that was good thing.)
It wasn't a sense of sadness either. It was more like looking at the full moon and the feeling the weight of waiting. When Gash was around, he defined time from battle to battle. They had a goal to reach, and a limited time to get there. Every minute counted.
Now time seemed suspended, in a way. It wasn't a bad thing. Mostly.
***
If Sunbeam-san had pressed, maybe Kiyomaro would have said that his original question was enough; as long as the battles stopped, did it matter who the king was?
Or perhaps he would have given some bullshit about warping the space time continuum (and he knew enough about that to be more than merely convincing -- it would've been the truth).
What Kiyomaro might have said but didn't -- (though Sunbeam-san seemed to already know, regardless, from the way he had just given a short simple nod) -- was this:
There was something quite frightening in certainty, even more than in the unknown.
***
Eigth grade, according to Nakata-codenamed-T.M.-Lee-sensei, was the most serious year in all their student lives. It was last and first step on the track that would determine their paths forever.
"Dreams!" Nakata-sensei had screamed as his hands fisted around the chalk like claws, "are well and good enough. But you will never make it with just dreams!. Takamine-kun -- have you changed your wishy-washy ways?! What do you mean you just want to go to high school, then university?! Simply going on with your brains is not enough! What are you going to do when you graduate?! Everything needs to be tailored towards that plan! And that starts now! So what are you going to choose?!"
Back then, what he couldn't say was that there really hadn't been room to think of anything else but making Gash king. And as for choices, in many cases, if the certain other demons had won, there wouldn't have been much of a world left to live in.
Between life or total annihilation ... it didn't involve much of a decision making process really. He fought, blew some things up good, and hoped for best..
Besides, he had thought back then, if I help Gash accomplish his goal, I'll find what's important to me too.
Now at fifteen, he'd achieved his greatest dream. (And Kiyomaro was pretty sure they didn't come any bigger than making someone king.)
As for what came after ...
Kiyomaro held the last mouthful of milk, letting it slide down his throat slowly. Now that he had stopped working, he noticed he was actually rather tired. Luckily, tomorrow was Saturday, unlike the last time he had stayed up until the clock ticked its way from "late" to "early".
He did try his best not to sleep in class, though. While the classes themselves really had nothing new to teach him, it didn't mean there wasn't plenty to learn. No one in his middle school attended his new high school; it meant starting over and figuring out, again, how to defuse his fellow students' anger or trepidation at his genius status. Not many people understood why he chose to go to high school when he could just skip to University (and probably all the way to grad school).
And he didn't have Gash this time.
The first months had been awkward.
(And boy, between boob grabbing superstars and professors dressed as fairies,he had thought he'd already had his fill of awkward situations. Unfortunately, Kiyomaro discovered that there was a whole new level when it came to awkwardness and high school. Suddenly everybody seemed to be trying to grow into their bodies ... and futures ... and everyone seemed exceptionally snarky about it all. He could write a whole thesis about the odd social stratification of lunch time and why it was wise not to anger the all-female taiko club. They were even scarier than Big Boing. They liked to beat other people's body parts.)
Everyone around him was changing, growing, and he couldn't begrudge them their growing pains. He tried to be understanding. Somewhere in that long sprint between when the battles first started and the last time he had seen Gash, he remembered changing too, and how hard that had been.
After the first two months of frosty stares, his fellow students now greeted him nicely enough. The instructors, once he had showed them that he wasn't watching and waiting to correct them, had started to accept his presence as well. There were still some offhanded remarks about how he was wasting his time but the comments were becoming fewer and fewer.
"It's your choice. If you don't mind waiting ..." they said, and Kiyomaro had just given them a small smile. The words "choice" and "waiting" were like loss and sadness to him now; he had his own definitions.
Kiyomaro raised the now empty milk carton in a half salute. I'm doing well, Gash. I'm living every day the best I can; I'm having fun too. Thanks to you, I can make it on my own. But ...
Maybe fifteen was a bit young to achieve one's greatest dream.
***
He never did tell the others about the small toy in Dr. M2's suitcase. They probably guessed that he had something to do with the oversized army of Vulcans. The design was unmistakable.
Not even Sunbeam-san, though, ever voiced a guess about the real connection.
He never told, not even Gash. Never explained that that the words that came out of Yondaime were probably his own, spoken from an unknown time in the future. Part of him had already known, even without asking, what the presence of the toy had meant. The fact that the Makkai had a future, one where there could be toys and messages of friendship ...
It made Gash's goal seem less like a dream and more like destiny ... and he couldn't help but feel something was lost along the way.
Besides, knowing hadn't helped the heartache in the fight against Faud. Despite the promise that there would be a future, fighting Clear had still made him feel the same the leg-shaking, bladder-loosening and heart attack inducing fear of 'what if'.
Knowing that there would be a future -- and the promise inherent in that knowledge -- didn't exactly tell Kiyomaro how he was going to get there.
Or how the waiting would be in between.
Sometimes, he thought he could really hate Dr. M2.
***
He was actually too tired to properly clean off his desk, but he still forced himself do it anyway. First came the tools, then the spare parts he hadn't used, then finally, he placed the small rectangle frame, with its familiar blank eyes and wide grin, on the ever-important work shelf.
This version wasn't quite right -- it didn't match the one he remembered in his head. Or the one he tried not to remember or copy. (Wasn't inventing something that didn't yet exist supposed to be a creative process? It felt like cheating to already know how it would come out.)
Damn photographic memory, Kiyomaro thought with a sigh.
He had a feeling he had several more generations to go before he could ever match the vision he tried hard not to remember.
Gash would probably be too old for toys by then. Did kings really even need toys? Could they have toys?
But they certainly need promises, he reassured himself.
He wondered, for a moment, what his teachers (both former and current) would say if they knew his current "greatest goal" in life was just to build a certain toy so that he could entrust a certain message to it.
Really, was there any need to plan anymore, when he already knew things would work out? What was the use of dreaming at all?
Gash had gone home a king.
Without a doubt, Kiyomaro was supremely happy and grateful for that. And most days, he wasn't sad, nor was he depressed. Moreover, he knew he was going to succeed in anything he did; it was rather comforting, no matter how frustrating high school could be at times (or how odd his fellow students and friends were). He knew he could stand on his own power.
But sometimes ... he wondered .. what if there really were no more big dreams or challenges left for him?
He would finish Vulcan someday. He would see Gash again, and give the little mecha (and the message he already knew, word for word) to him. Step by step, night after night, he was building up to that inevitability.
But until then, though, he felt as if his current life story was being written in future perfect tense; something in him was waiting for an event that had not happened yet, but would happen no matter what.
Perhaps then he'd be able to sleep to dream, or dream when he was awake again.
Knowing the future really is, Kiyomaro thought, as he gave one last jaw cracking yawn, a BIG pain in the ass.
He stood, just for a moment, and leaned against a certain wall in his bedroom. He was positive he could feel the wind through the non-existent cracks, proof that there was something left in the present beyond the memories of the past and future.
It would have to be enough, for now.
***
(Click to hear the song that was stuck in my head the ENTIRE time I was writing this thing! XD) I swear, I hear it once on the radio, and it got STUCK FOREVER. Then I just had to draw the picture. *sigh*
A/N: Anyways, I'm squeaking in just before the deadline, mostly thanks to Hima-D who did an emergency beta and who gave the green light for me to post. I wasn't feeling very sure about it all, but she pointed out that hey, she enjoyed it. Perhaps other readers will too?
It's been awhile since I've dipped my toes in this fandom, and I'll be the first to admit that this is not my best work; I don't think I'm hitting anything new or even exciting. However, it's the first time I've ever seen Konjiki no Gash Bell used as the source of a prompt, so I just had to try my best. Plus, I was also inspired by the fact that complete scanlations of the series are now available! Much love to the scanlators for not giving up, even when VIZ has stopped.
I don't know if I hit the prompt exactly, but I tried? The story morphed on me halfway through, so yeaaaaaaaah .... I hate when that happens, but there you have it. This is definitely inspired by the prompt though.
It's the same old "what do heroes do after the battle is finished?" sort of idea ... but hopefully I pulled it off in a way that suits Kiyomaro's character. It makes an odd "pair" to the other story I wrote a while back (that was well before the ending of the manga came out, and even before chapter 276!)
I tried not to make everything emo and angsty, but I do wonder ... I think Kiyomaro's learned enough about life from Gash that he wouldn't be depressed (the last chapter pretty much confirms this).
And make no mistake, his current life (in this story at least) is pretty good. But I bet Kiyomaro does have a few wistful thoughts of "what can I do with my life that could possibly top saving the world?" And as a genius, Kiyomaro is the sort that rather likes puzzles and challenges. But I don't think he'd be really sad about it. *shrugs*
Anyway, yeah, thanks for reading. :) Hopefully if I ever write in this fandom again (who knows?) I'll actually write a piece with Gash in it again; I tend to write better when the titular character makes an appearance. XD
As always, much luv to Hima-D for absolute-last-minute beta and the encouragement.
And if you can, please let me know how I did!
-muri
Day/Theme: November 20- "lost in a dream from which I can't awaken"
Series: Konjiki no Gash Bell!!
Characters: Kiyomaro
Rating: G
Timeline: Post-series. Heavy on references to chapter 276 specifically, as well as the events in the 2nd movie, "Attack of the Mechavulcan!!"
----
Only Sunbeam-san had asked. He had waited until after the portal closed, after final echoes of thunder had died down, and after the others had turned their attention elsewhere. Perhaps Megumi-san and Folgore hadn't thought ask. Or perhaps they didn't want to know.
"That demon, Dr. M2 ... he was from the future, right?" Sunbeam-san had nailed those intense green eyes on him, and Kiyomaro, as always, found himself transfixed. Though he had stood toe to toe with idols and pop stars, company presidents and mad geniuses, armed robbers and thugs, it was really only Sunbeam-san who could consistently make Kiyomaro feel all of his fourteen years ... and how short that span really was. "Did you ask him who the victor of the battle was?"
Startled, Kiyomaro had nearly dropped his backpack. A quick glance to the others showed that they hadn't noticed, nor were they listening. "No," he had said. "I didn't. I only asked if the trial to become king still continued ..."
Sunbeam tilted his head to side.
"He was a total loon," Kiyomaro elaborated. "He said he didn't have an interest in such things."
"Why didn't you ask the question with the most direct answer? Why didn't you ask the name of the king?" Sunbeam-san's voice never lost its neutrality. His expression was serene.
Afterwards, Kiyomaro would always remember just how calm Sunbeam-san seemed even when adding what seemed like the weight of the world into those words.
"I ... don't know."
But that was a lie, back then.
***
It was the growing ache in his fingers that finally made Kiyomaro put down the screwdriver and blink hazily at his bedside clock. Four am in the morning?! It was easier to lose track of time, he noted, now that the room was his alone.
Kiyomaro stretched high towards the ceiling, yawning as he did so. The phosphorescent light hummed above him as he curled and uncurled his fingers, one by one, trying to work out the tightness in each digit. On the table, a sea of springs and gears radiated outward like the petals of a metal flower.
(Had he really been working for four hours? He could've sworn it was only thirty minutes. Without a whiny little voice asking him if he was going to bed yet, unu!, sometimes it took the soft grey light of morning before he'd remembered that yes, while working was important, perhaps sleep was too.)
Kiyomaro pushed up out of the chair, wincing slightly as his legs protested the sudden rush of blood. He was careful to not jostle the project on the table.
The house sat silently on its foundation; his mother had gone to bed hours ago. She'd probably yell at him if she knew he was still up. He could almost hear her voice dipping into the familiar curving tones as she nagged.
It was rather annoying, Kiyomaro reflected, how he had internalized so many voices in his head. Perhaps a sign of early onset of insanity?
Naah, he chuckled internally. Probably went insane a LONG time ago before this ...
As he made his way down the hallway, Kiyomaro balanced on the balls of his feet to reduce the sound of his steps. He automatically avoided the fifth stair down as well.
(The staircase had never quite been the same after Brago and Sherri's first visit. At the end of the battle, the demon world had promised that the human world would be returned to its original, pristine stage. Nothing should have remained, save for the memories. Yet, Kiyomaro swore that certain steps still creaked arthritically and that his bedroom still felt a little drafty when the wind blew through a once-destroyed wall.)
Down in the kitchen, Kiyomaro opened the door to stare at the depressingly full fridge, stocked with everything from pudding cups to the leftovers from their steamed fished dinner. (Just when, exactly, had a full fridge become depressing, Kiyomaro wondered.)
Pulling out the carton of milk, he shook it idly. Most of the milk was nearly gone. Shrugging, he opened the carton and drank it straight from the lip. In the window above the sink, he could see the full round weight of the moon.
Foregoing the kitchen table, Kiyomaro slid down to sit and lean against the closed fridge door. The coolness of the floor seeped through his pajama pants and the drip from the faucet completed the quiet ambiance. A silent night, in a quiet town, with nothing but the moonlight and his own thoughts for company.
I wonder if it's night where Gash is?
Truth was, such late nights were pretty rare, considering. Kiyomaro had initially been surprised at how easy it was to sleep at night. In the months after Gash's victory, all he had to do was slide between the waiting sheets and then it'd be morning. He didn't even dream at night anymore, nor were there any more nightmares about losing the battle, losing Gash, or just losing himself.
He found the rhythm of high school life rather easy to adjust to as well; he had always thought he'd be bored. What was Advanced Calculus in comparison to blowing up and/or saving the world (sometimes both at the same time?)
However, despite any and all predictions, his days still were as full as they had been when Gash was around; Suzume dropped by nearly daily (and nearly always in tears about the school work that had piled up during the day.) Yamanaka still came by to goad him into playing baseball, Kanayama was still searching for that damn Tsuchinoko (and insisting that Kiyomaro carry the net), and Iwashima ... well, at least Iwashima had taken a transfer student position in the United States (New Mexico, Kiyomaro believed), but he still sent increasingly bizarre post cards. More puzzlingly, the odd guy from his eighth grade class also dropped by constantly, moaning about morning glories. (The guy was rather disturbing, Kiyomaro thought privately, but he welcomed him all the same.)
And then there were the letters he received from around the world. Italy, England, France, Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam, China ... the bulletin board he had put up in his room had filled quickly, so he had to resort to taping them to his walls.
He'd have to tack them on the ceiling soon.
And of course, there was that one letter. Gash's letter. The one he kept separate on his bookcase, where he kept his most important work.
Kiyomaro took another long swig of milk. His days weren't really silent or lifeless or without color. It wasn't as full of all three, of course, as when Gash was around. Gash, after all, was nothing if not loud, lively, and colorful.
Kiyomaro would be lying if he said he didn't miss that ...but what he felt wasn't anything like the feeling of loss. (He knew that feeling well enough to give it a personal definition beyond words in a dictionary. Unlike before, he now knew many things beyond the definition of books -- and for the most part, that was good thing.)
It wasn't a sense of sadness either. It was more like looking at the full moon and the feeling the weight of waiting. When Gash was around, he defined time from battle to battle. They had a goal to reach, and a limited time to get there. Every minute counted.
Now time seemed suspended, in a way. It wasn't a bad thing. Mostly.
***
If Sunbeam-san had pressed, maybe Kiyomaro would have said that his original question was enough; as long as the battles stopped, did it matter who the king was?
Or perhaps he would have given some bullshit about warping the space time continuum (and he knew enough about that to be more than merely convincing -- it would've been the truth).
What Kiyomaro might have said but didn't -- (though Sunbeam-san seemed to already know, regardless, from the way he had just given a short simple nod) -- was this:
There was something quite frightening in certainty, even more than in the unknown.
***
Eigth grade, according to Nakata-codenamed-T.M.-Lee-sensei, was the most serious year in all their student lives. It was last and first step on the track that would determine their paths forever.
"Dreams!" Nakata-sensei had screamed as his hands fisted around the chalk like claws, "are well and good enough. But you will never make it with just dreams!. Takamine-kun -- have you changed your wishy-washy ways?! What do you mean you just want to go to high school, then university?! Simply going on with your brains is not enough! What are you going to do when you graduate?! Everything needs to be tailored towards that plan! And that starts now! So what are you going to choose?!"
Back then, what he couldn't say was that there really hadn't been room to think of anything else but making Gash king. And as for choices, in many cases, if the certain other demons had won, there wouldn't have been much of a world left to live in.
Between life or total annihilation ... it didn't involve much of a decision making process really. He fought, blew some things up good, and hoped for best..
Besides, he had thought back then, if I help Gash accomplish his goal, I'll find what's important to me too.
Now at fifteen, he'd achieved his greatest dream. (And Kiyomaro was pretty sure they didn't come any bigger than making someone king.)
As for what came after ...
Kiyomaro held the last mouthful of milk, letting it slide down his throat slowly. Now that he had stopped working, he noticed he was actually rather tired. Luckily, tomorrow was Saturday, unlike the last time he had stayed up until the clock ticked its way from "late" to "early".
He did try his best not to sleep in class, though. While the classes themselves really had nothing new to teach him, it didn't mean there wasn't plenty to learn. No one in his middle school attended his new high school; it meant starting over and figuring out, again, how to defuse his fellow students' anger or trepidation at his genius status. Not many people understood why he chose to go to high school when he could just skip to University (and probably all the way to grad school).
And he didn't have Gash this time.
The first months had been awkward.
(And boy, between boob grabbing superstars and professors dressed as fairies,he had thought he'd already had his fill of awkward situations. Unfortunately, Kiyomaro discovered that there was a whole new level when it came to awkwardness and high school. Suddenly everybody seemed to be trying to grow into their bodies ... and futures ... and everyone seemed exceptionally snarky about it all. He could write a whole thesis about the odd social stratification of lunch time and why it was wise not to anger the all-female taiko club. They were even scarier than Big Boing. They liked to beat other people's body parts.)
Everyone around him was changing, growing, and he couldn't begrudge them their growing pains. He tried to be understanding. Somewhere in that long sprint between when the battles first started and the last time he had seen Gash, he remembered changing too, and how hard that had been.
After the first two months of frosty stares, his fellow students now greeted him nicely enough. The instructors, once he had showed them that he wasn't watching and waiting to correct them, had started to accept his presence as well. There were still some offhanded remarks about how he was wasting his time but the comments were becoming fewer and fewer.
"It's your choice. If you don't mind waiting ..." they said, and Kiyomaro had just given them a small smile. The words "choice" and "waiting" were like loss and sadness to him now; he had his own definitions.
Kiyomaro raised the now empty milk carton in a half salute. I'm doing well, Gash. I'm living every day the best I can; I'm having fun too. Thanks to you, I can make it on my own. But ...
Maybe fifteen was a bit young to achieve one's greatest dream.
***
He never did tell the others about the small toy in Dr. M2's suitcase. They probably guessed that he had something to do with the oversized army of Vulcans. The design was unmistakable.
Not even Sunbeam-san, though, ever voiced a guess about the real connection.
He never told, not even Gash. Never explained that that the words that came out of Yondaime were probably his own, spoken from an unknown time in the future. Part of him had already known, even without asking, what the presence of the toy had meant. The fact that the Makkai had a future, one where there could be toys and messages of friendship ...
It made Gash's goal seem less like a dream and more like destiny ... and he couldn't help but feel something was lost along the way.
Besides, knowing hadn't helped the heartache in the fight against Faud. Despite the promise that there would be a future, fighting Clear had still made him feel the same the leg-shaking, bladder-loosening and heart attack inducing fear of 'what if'.
Knowing that there would be a future -- and the promise inherent in that knowledge -- didn't exactly tell Kiyomaro how he was going to get there.
Or how the waiting would be in between.
Sometimes, he thought he could really hate Dr. M2.
***
He was actually too tired to properly clean off his desk, but he still forced himself do it anyway. First came the tools, then the spare parts he hadn't used, then finally, he placed the small rectangle frame, with its familiar blank eyes and wide grin, on the ever-important work shelf.
This version wasn't quite right -- it didn't match the one he remembered in his head. Or the one he tried not to remember or copy. (Wasn't inventing something that didn't yet exist supposed to be a creative process? It felt like cheating to already know how it would come out.)
Damn photographic memory, Kiyomaro thought with a sigh.
He had a feeling he had several more generations to go before he could ever match the vision he tried hard not to remember.
Gash would probably be too old for toys by then. Did kings really even need toys? Could they have toys?
But they certainly need promises, he reassured himself.
He wondered, for a moment, what his teachers (both former and current) would say if they knew his current "greatest goal" in life was just to build a certain toy so that he could entrust a certain message to it.
Really, was there any need to plan anymore, when he already knew things would work out? What was the use of dreaming at all?
Gash had gone home a king.
Without a doubt, Kiyomaro was supremely happy and grateful for that. And most days, he wasn't sad, nor was he depressed. Moreover, he knew he was going to succeed in anything he did; it was rather comforting, no matter how frustrating high school could be at times (or how odd his fellow students and friends were). He knew he could stand on his own power.
But sometimes ... he wondered .. what if there really were no more big dreams or challenges left for him?
He would finish Vulcan someday. He would see Gash again, and give the little mecha (and the message he already knew, word for word) to him. Step by step, night after night, he was building up to that inevitability.
But until then, though, he felt as if his current life story was being written in future perfect tense; something in him was waiting for an event that had not happened yet, but would happen no matter what.
Perhaps then he'd be able to sleep to dream, or dream when he was awake again.
Knowing the future really is, Kiyomaro thought, as he gave one last jaw cracking yawn, a BIG pain in the ass.
He stood, just for a moment, and leaned against a certain wall in his bedroom. He was positive he could feel the wind through the non-existent cracks, proof that there was something left in the present beyond the memories of the past and future.
It would have to be enough, for now.
***
(Click to hear the song that was stuck in my head the ENTIRE time I was writing this thing! XD) I swear, I hear it once on the radio, and it got STUCK FOREVER. Then I just had to draw the picture. *sigh*
A/N: Anyways, I'm squeaking in just before the deadline, mostly thanks to Hima-D who did an emergency beta and who gave the green light for me to post. I wasn't feeling very sure about it all, but she pointed out that hey, she enjoyed it. Perhaps other readers will too?
It's been awhile since I've dipped my toes in this fandom, and I'll be the first to admit that this is not my best work; I don't think I'm hitting anything new or even exciting. However, it's the first time I've ever seen Konjiki no Gash Bell used as the source of a prompt, so I just had to try my best. Plus, I was also inspired by the fact that complete scanlations of the series are now available! Much love to the scanlators for not giving up, even when VIZ has stopped.
I don't know if I hit the prompt exactly, but I tried? The story morphed on me halfway through, so yeaaaaaaaah .... I hate when that happens, but there you have it. This is definitely inspired by the prompt though.
It's the same old "what do heroes do after the battle is finished?" sort of idea ... but hopefully I pulled it off in a way that suits Kiyomaro's character. It makes an odd "pair" to the other story I wrote a while back (that was well before the ending of the manga came out, and even before chapter 276!)
I tried not to make everything emo and angsty, but I do wonder ... I think Kiyomaro's learned enough about life from Gash that he wouldn't be depressed (the last chapter pretty much confirms this).
And make no mistake, his current life (in this story at least) is pretty good. But I bet Kiyomaro does have a few wistful thoughts of "what can I do with my life that could possibly top saving the world?" And as a genius, Kiyomaro is the sort that rather likes puzzles and challenges. But I don't think he'd be really sad about it. *shrugs*
Anyway, yeah, thanks for reading. :) Hopefully if I ever write in this fandom again (who knows?) I'll actually write a piece with Gash in it again; I tend to write better when the titular character makes an appearance. XD
As always, much luv to Hima-D for absolute-last-minute beta and the encouragement.
And if you can, please let me know how I did!
-muri