ezyl
in
pillowcased
[shiraifu] reflections of passion
part 2 of 10 in a series of words
> written for countervalue re: help_japan
> oh man i'm on a roll
> the story doesn't even begin to make sense until like the last paragraph
> Fuji is a bassoonist.
> rating is safe, wordcount 1936
#2, passions is coming on and i wouldn't miss it for the world
To further his suspicion of the fallacies in Shiraishi's life story, Fuji drew a storyboard of all the events. Apart from the enthusiastic stick figures and random melodramatic inserts, he embellished the border of each box with careful little musical notes and decapitated animals, stick-figure puppies with their heads impossibly skewed at sixty-degree angles. The elaborate fanfare remained elusive, and Fuji remained vigilant. He said many things to Shiraishi. Said the world could become a reckless place. Said he wanted to offer a refreshing image. Said it made him want to become more artistic, or maybe make potions in a traveling show. Said he kind of wished Eiji was here to listen to him talk. Said Shiraishi should probably shut up if he didn't have anything positive to contribute.
"You don't need to go as far as to draw me coming out of the birthing canal," said Shiraishi. "I really don't think that's a necessary part of our collective unconsci--"
"Shut up," said Fuji, and he continued to sketch.
After, Fuji went to sleep with a clearer head and fiddled with the curtains on the east side so that he could expose his head to the stars. It was raining that night in the skies near the apartment and neither of them could see the stars, but he did it anyway. Shiraishi pretended not to notice Fuji's strange behavior only because he had a biotech practical in the morning. The television in the room next door drifted through the whitewash and plaster like a ghost, making muffled ghost noises through the walls. Everything was too thin and Shiraishi could hear the bass drums, loose entrails from a disparaging car commercial. He wasn't very interested in Honda Civics anyway, unless if they were dark blue and from '92. And even then he wouldn't have settled for one unless if the dealers threw in for free some metallic flames on the frame of his license plate.
While Fuji had his head in the stars, Shiraishi fell asleep thinking about license plates.
*
This wasn't even the first time. The first time it occurred, Shiraishi was still studying business in college and Fuji wasn't. Fuji had decided to become a street performer. Fuji had decided to walk the narrow route and undertake the braver task, the one that didn't require any bricklaying and too much crumpled paper. For seven weeks he camped out next to the room where the suicide club met every Wednesday until last Wednesday and he played on his bassoon a sad tune by Satie until everyone around him started sniffling, including himself. During that period, he ate crackers and drank Gatorade. His heart was in his head. For no reason Shiraishi could explain, it reminded him of castles.
"It's because I'm trying to be lively," Fuji said once, only once. "I want to be alive!"
"Well it's not as if you're dead," said Shiraishi.
Fuji ignored him. "We could have this whole concert every week. With that other band who played at the Homeless Net Cafe. What's the leader's name again? I think he called himself Professor Oak. Or was it her, the girl with the loud voice? Elizaveta. I heard she fucked every single professor at that fancy conservatory in Vienna. You know it's a right shame that the members of the suicide club had to off themselves last Wednesday. I wanted to play for them. I even wanted to do a Madonna number but I never learned the proper octave for the song. It's a real shame they had to jump off that bridge."
"Isn't that the point of the suicide club? To kill themselves?"
"But that's just. Depressing."
"I still don't see where you're going with this."
"It is what it is, ne."
*
But for Shiraishi, who was still a business major, the truly depressing bit was that nobody ever spared Fuji any coins. After a while, he inferred that it was because Fuji was too well-dressed, so resplendent in his blue raincoat and birkenstocks that mostly everyone on campus just assumed that he was a flippant art student jonesing to become a somnabulist.
And Fuji didn't mind. His head was still in the stars.
*
There was one day when Fuji decided he'd go shopping for apples.
"You can come along," he told Shiraishi brightly.
"I'm afraid that I'm not very good at soliciting advice when it comes to picking apples. What will I do?" Shiraishi asked, and received no response.
As it turned out, Fuji didn't require any help picking out apples. He drove to the supermarket in his sister's red convertible with Shiraishi sitting in the backseat tapping his fingernails against the windowpanes. He chatted pleasantly to himself about tax returns and Jimi Hendrix and the trees in Alaska, bouncing ideas off the windshield of his car. He was brainstorming possible locations for his next concert, and the vacant lot behind the Biotech Building seemed liked the most viable option at the moment. He drove with either both hands or no hands on the steering wheel, never with just one. The radio was turned off, and a piece of duct tape sealed away any possibility for musical intervention. They arrived at the supermarket at 5:45 sharp, and Shiraishi realized that his watch was five minutes fast.
Fuji didn't pick out any of the good apples. He did, however, find every single apple that had a little black hole in it or a bruise from rough handling. He took prize in scavenging the Granny Smiths for ones with brown spots the size of his thumb, and he spent ten minutes prowling through the Red Delicious pile for one without a stem. He made Shiraishi hold all of his baskets while he went trotting off in search of outstanding apples, which Shiraishi took to be the reason why he had been invited to come along on this trip. As a business major, he was very good at ruling out reasons for his existence.
Fuji continued to search for apples.
"It's all subjective," he explained, and Shiraishi listened. "What's blemished to you may look absolutely enchanting in the eyes of a worm. That is, if worms had eyes. I'm not one to stereotype. Moreover, if everyone picks out the good apples, who will eat the rest? And once you pick out a damaged one, you won't have to worry about damaging it."
He had a point.
"So what do you think?" he asked, picking out an over-ripe Fuji. He dumped his namesake in Shiraishi's basket. It smelled sickly sweet.
"It's..."
"Ectasy," Fuji murmured. "It's...ectasy, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't exactly call it that," said Shiraishi, "but sure."
"You don't really think so, do you."
"I can't say I've put much thought into it, to be honest."
Fuji shrugged. They drove home and Shiraishi rode shotgun.
*
It grew irritating to watch him. He would stand there and play something really off-putting, fingers rhythmic on the pipe of his tattered bassoon. Time would climb into bed for a while, the color of his raincoat would bring out the color in his eyes, and he'd watch the students in the University drift by him; the ones who were alone would glance at him once and pretend to shift around their pockets for change while the ones in pairs would forego the routine entirely and chat about drinks at the karaoke bar and Yoko ditching Yu for Koike while wearing Rihanna's dress, off-color jokes from engineering class and the Latin professor who spoke to his students in accented German. Half the time, Shiraishi expected Fuji to drop the act and bounce forward in a horrific remix of the Sexy Sax Man, but it was clearly too much to ask for. (He concluded that not everyone was privileged enough to be a fan of George Michael.)
But the funny part was, Fuji never stopped. He never spoke during these little performing sessions, but he never stopped. He slowed down, but he didn't ever try to stop. It was like watching a wooden statue slowly turning into stone.
The next semester, Shiraishi dropped his business class and took up biotech.
*
"You're kind of creepy," Chitose told him. "You're kind of really creepy."
"And how'd you figure that one?"
"Did you actually take up biotech just so you could exit class everyday and see him play angsty music on his pipe? You're practically a stalker, Kura."
"It's not a pipe, it's a bassoon. And what would you rather I'd done? I have no musical background. It's not like I wanted to become a member of the new suicide club, either. They have a tendency to die."
"It's not funny," said Chitose. "I had to convince my sister against it. She was going through her Versailles phase and Jasmine You's death hit her really hard, okay? So it's not funny."
"I never said it was funny."
"But you were thinking it."
"I was not."
"Were too."
"Oh for the love of--"
"Never mind. You gotta focus on your studies, man. You don't even come out to play tennis like you used to. All I do these days is commute back and forth and fuck Teppei in between my hours at the host club. It gets kind of boring, you know. Maybe you should worry about me some more! It's not like his pipe is that important."
"It's a bassoon."
*
It took him three months to win Fuji over, after that. He spent more time in the vacant lot than in any other place that semester, sitting on an upturned trash can listening to Fuji play the same notes for forty-five minutes and then abruptly switching to DBSK. It was moderately enjoyable, and bearable only because Fuji's blue raincoat brought out the color in his eyes. On more than one occasion, he tried to request Ingrid Michaelson, but Fuji would never appease him, citing the weather and irreconcilable differences. It was during this time that Shiraishi started imagining the castles again, except this time there were tiptoes in the corridors and slightly off-putting musky odors and tabby cats everywhere. The statue continued its descent into stone. The sun would set and Fuji would play for five more minutes, and he would leave with his bassoon case and Shiraishi would sit there, contemplating the weather and what it could offer as a veritable asset to their collective conscious. It never seemed to congeal properly.
And after three months, Fuji finished five minutes early. He skipped the ending to his ballad about a flower lady, and approached Shiraishi.
"Hey, I think I get it," he said. The bassoon case was slung over his back like a neglected love child. "You have a crush on me, don't you?"
"O-Of course not," said Shiraishi. "I just like hanging around here."
"You used to be a business student," Fuji accused. "You used to be obsessed with equilibrium theory. You can't just suddenly turn recombinant DNA on me. That's just wrong, ne."
"A guy can change," said Shiraishi. "He doesn't need the approval of others. He can't pick all the good apples. It's...ecstasy."
"Ecstasy," Fuji repeated, and then he laughed. The sun went down and his neglected love child slipped off his shoulder a little. "And here I was, thinking that going to university in Osaka would never become more exasperating."
"Technically, you never went to the University."
"But if I move in with you, I will escape this technicality. Right?"
Shiraishi couldn't say anything to that. He waited for the punch line.
Unfortunately, it never came.
>>
previous part | fic list | sexy sax man
> written for countervalue re: help_japan
> oh man i'm on a roll
> the story doesn't even begin to make sense until like the last paragraph
> Fuji is a bassoonist.
> rating is safe, wordcount 1936
#2, passions is coming on and i wouldn't miss it for the world
To further his suspicion of the fallacies in Shiraishi's life story, Fuji drew a storyboard of all the events. Apart from the enthusiastic stick figures and random melodramatic inserts, he embellished the border of each box with careful little musical notes and decapitated animals, stick-figure puppies with their heads impossibly skewed at sixty-degree angles. The elaborate fanfare remained elusive, and Fuji remained vigilant. He said many things to Shiraishi. Said the world could become a reckless place. Said he wanted to offer a refreshing image. Said it made him want to become more artistic, or maybe make potions in a traveling show. Said he kind of wished Eiji was here to listen to him talk. Said Shiraishi should probably shut up if he didn't have anything positive to contribute.
"You don't need to go as far as to draw me coming out of the birthing canal," said Shiraishi. "I really don't think that's a necessary part of our collective unconsci--"
"Shut up," said Fuji, and he continued to sketch.
After, Fuji went to sleep with a clearer head and fiddled with the curtains on the east side so that he could expose his head to the stars. It was raining that night in the skies near the apartment and neither of them could see the stars, but he did it anyway. Shiraishi pretended not to notice Fuji's strange behavior only because he had a biotech practical in the morning. The television in the room next door drifted through the whitewash and plaster like a ghost, making muffled ghost noises through the walls. Everything was too thin and Shiraishi could hear the bass drums, loose entrails from a disparaging car commercial. He wasn't very interested in Honda Civics anyway, unless if they were dark blue and from '92. And even then he wouldn't have settled for one unless if the dealers threw in for free some metallic flames on the frame of his license plate.
While Fuji had his head in the stars, Shiraishi fell asleep thinking about license plates.
*
This wasn't even the first time. The first time it occurred, Shiraishi was still studying business in college and Fuji wasn't. Fuji had decided to become a street performer. Fuji had decided to walk the narrow route and undertake the braver task, the one that didn't require any bricklaying and too much crumpled paper. For seven weeks he camped out next to the room where the suicide club met every Wednesday until last Wednesday and he played on his bassoon a sad tune by Satie until everyone around him started sniffling, including himself. During that period, he ate crackers and drank Gatorade. His heart was in his head. For no reason Shiraishi could explain, it reminded him of castles.
"It's because I'm trying to be lively," Fuji said once, only once. "I want to be alive!"
"Well it's not as if you're dead," said Shiraishi.
Fuji ignored him. "We could have this whole concert every week. With that other band who played at the Homeless Net Cafe. What's the leader's name again? I think he called himself Professor Oak. Or was it her, the girl with the loud voice? Elizaveta. I heard she fucked every single professor at that fancy conservatory in Vienna. You know it's a right shame that the members of the suicide club had to off themselves last Wednesday. I wanted to play for them. I even wanted to do a Madonna number but I never learned the proper octave for the song. It's a real shame they had to jump off that bridge."
"Isn't that the point of the suicide club? To kill themselves?"
"But that's just. Depressing."
"I still don't see where you're going with this."
"It is what it is, ne."
*
But for Shiraishi, who was still a business major, the truly depressing bit was that nobody ever spared Fuji any coins. After a while, he inferred that it was because Fuji was too well-dressed, so resplendent in his blue raincoat and birkenstocks that mostly everyone on campus just assumed that he was a flippant art student jonesing to become a somnabulist.
And Fuji didn't mind. His head was still in the stars.
*
There was one day when Fuji decided he'd go shopping for apples.
"You can come along," he told Shiraishi brightly.
"I'm afraid that I'm not very good at soliciting advice when it comes to picking apples. What will I do?" Shiraishi asked, and received no response.
As it turned out, Fuji didn't require any help picking out apples. He drove to the supermarket in his sister's red convertible with Shiraishi sitting in the backseat tapping his fingernails against the windowpanes. He chatted pleasantly to himself about tax returns and Jimi Hendrix and the trees in Alaska, bouncing ideas off the windshield of his car. He was brainstorming possible locations for his next concert, and the vacant lot behind the Biotech Building seemed liked the most viable option at the moment. He drove with either both hands or no hands on the steering wheel, never with just one. The radio was turned off, and a piece of duct tape sealed away any possibility for musical intervention. They arrived at the supermarket at 5:45 sharp, and Shiraishi realized that his watch was five minutes fast.
Fuji didn't pick out any of the good apples. He did, however, find every single apple that had a little black hole in it or a bruise from rough handling. He took prize in scavenging the Granny Smiths for ones with brown spots the size of his thumb, and he spent ten minutes prowling through the Red Delicious pile for one without a stem. He made Shiraishi hold all of his baskets while he went trotting off in search of outstanding apples, which Shiraishi took to be the reason why he had been invited to come along on this trip. As a business major, he was very good at ruling out reasons for his existence.
Fuji continued to search for apples.
"It's all subjective," he explained, and Shiraishi listened. "What's blemished to you may look absolutely enchanting in the eyes of a worm. That is, if worms had eyes. I'm not one to stereotype. Moreover, if everyone picks out the good apples, who will eat the rest? And once you pick out a damaged one, you won't have to worry about damaging it."
He had a point.
"So what do you think?" he asked, picking out an over-ripe Fuji. He dumped his namesake in Shiraishi's basket. It smelled sickly sweet.
"It's..."
"Ectasy," Fuji murmured. "It's...ectasy, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't exactly call it that," said Shiraishi, "but sure."
"You don't really think so, do you."
"I can't say I've put much thought into it, to be honest."
Fuji shrugged. They drove home and Shiraishi rode shotgun.
*
It grew irritating to watch him. He would stand there and play something really off-putting, fingers rhythmic on the pipe of his tattered bassoon. Time would climb into bed for a while, the color of his raincoat would bring out the color in his eyes, and he'd watch the students in the University drift by him; the ones who were alone would glance at him once and pretend to shift around their pockets for change while the ones in pairs would forego the routine entirely and chat about drinks at the karaoke bar and Yoko ditching Yu for Koike while wearing Rihanna's dress, off-color jokes from engineering class and the Latin professor who spoke to his students in accented German. Half the time, Shiraishi expected Fuji to drop the act and bounce forward in a horrific remix of the Sexy Sax Man, but it was clearly too much to ask for. (He concluded that not everyone was privileged enough to be a fan of George Michael.)
But the funny part was, Fuji never stopped. He never spoke during these little performing sessions, but he never stopped. He slowed down, but he didn't ever try to stop. It was like watching a wooden statue slowly turning into stone.
The next semester, Shiraishi dropped his business class and took up biotech.
*
"You're kind of creepy," Chitose told him. "You're kind of really creepy."
"And how'd you figure that one?"
"Did you actually take up biotech just so you could exit class everyday and see him play angsty music on his pipe? You're practically a stalker, Kura."
"It's not a pipe, it's a bassoon. And what would you rather I'd done? I have no musical background. It's not like I wanted to become a member of the new suicide club, either. They have a tendency to die."
"It's not funny," said Chitose. "I had to convince my sister against it. She was going through her Versailles phase and Jasmine You's death hit her really hard, okay? So it's not funny."
"I never said it was funny."
"But you were thinking it."
"I was not."
"Were too."
"Oh for the love of--"
"Never mind. You gotta focus on your studies, man. You don't even come out to play tennis like you used to. All I do these days is commute back and forth and fuck Teppei in between my hours at the host club. It gets kind of boring, you know. Maybe you should worry about me some more! It's not like his pipe is that important."
"It's a bassoon."
*
It took him three months to win Fuji over, after that. He spent more time in the vacant lot than in any other place that semester, sitting on an upturned trash can listening to Fuji play the same notes for forty-five minutes and then abruptly switching to DBSK. It was moderately enjoyable, and bearable only because Fuji's blue raincoat brought out the color in his eyes. On more than one occasion, he tried to request Ingrid Michaelson, but Fuji would never appease him, citing the weather and irreconcilable differences. It was during this time that Shiraishi started imagining the castles again, except this time there were tiptoes in the corridors and slightly off-putting musky odors and tabby cats everywhere. The statue continued its descent into stone. The sun would set and Fuji would play for five more minutes, and he would leave with his bassoon case and Shiraishi would sit there, contemplating the weather and what it could offer as a veritable asset to their collective conscious. It never seemed to congeal properly.
And after three months, Fuji finished five minutes early. He skipped the ending to his ballad about a flower lady, and approached Shiraishi.
"Hey, I think I get it," he said. The bassoon case was slung over his back like a neglected love child. "You have a crush on me, don't you?"
"O-Of course not," said Shiraishi. "I just like hanging around here."
"You used to be a business student," Fuji accused. "You used to be obsessed with equilibrium theory. You can't just suddenly turn recombinant DNA on me. That's just wrong, ne."
"A guy can change," said Shiraishi. "He doesn't need the approval of others. He can't pick all the good apples. It's...ecstasy."
"Ecstasy," Fuji repeated, and then he laughed. The sun went down and his neglected love child slipped off his shoulder a little. "And here I was, thinking that going to university in Osaka would never become more exasperating."
"Technically, you never went to the University."
"But if I move in with you, I will escape this technicality. Right?"
Shiraishi couldn't say anything to that. He waited for the punch line.
Unfortunately, it never came.
>>
previous part | fic list | sexy sax man