It's beem a while since I've posted anything. Not that I post much, but it's
still technically been a while. I wish I could attribute my lack of
production due to lazyness, but I've strangley enough been overworked. This
is a fic I've been working on for quite some time. C+C are welcome.
I do not own the rights to anything Marmalade Boy. I use all names and
allusions to the series without permission. Etc. etc. etc.
The real Miki
By: Szymon Stachniak
She awoke in cold sweat. For the few moments that followed she could neither
remember where or who she was, but she knew she was not alone. Someone
close, and yet distant all at the same time. Slowly, as if her brain was an
engine that required time to warm up, her memory returned. Her slim jittery
hand moved to her left, grabbing hold of the half-empty bottle that she
brought towards her. She could smell it even before it touched her lips and
the putrid stench made her reconsider subjecting her body to the foul
liquid. Pushing the bottle back on to the table, Miki slowly brushed her bed
sheet over and got out of bed. Staring at the man who had been laying beside
her, she began to think. Funny, she thought, as she stared at his naked
body. Funny how the mystique of sex had disappeared over the years. She
smiled and wiped the slowly forming tear from her eye.
Miki walked into the bathroom. The cold tiles felt hard against her naked
feet. The room was old and dirty, and the yellow wallpaper she had recently
put up to mask the ugliness was already beginning to peel off at the sides.
She did not care anymore. Slowly splashing her face with the cold water that
dribbled out of the tap, Miki began to sob. This blond haired man in her
bed, who was he really? He was just like any other man, nobody.
Nights like these were becoming much too frequent. There were days when her
mind decided it was appropriate to re-examine her life, and when it decided
to do so, Miki would be forced to endure yet another sleepless night.
Questions arose that probed at the reason of her being. She could hardly
call what she did a job, but it paid the bills did it not? She didn�t have a
relationship with the man in her bed, but the sex was there. Was that not
enough? It was not the life she had imagined for herself when she was
growing up, but it wasn�t all that bad was it?
Growing up. . . Life seemed so much simpler in those days. Smiling, she
recalled the days when she daydreamt in class as a younger girl. Her wild
imagination had never envisioned this scenario, had it? And yet here it was.
This was her life. What had happened? Why did things turn out the way they
did?
She knew she was not going to be able to sleep. Akashi was snoring, and the
depression that had set in on her was not going anywhere. Miki slowly walked
to her writing desk and sat down. She slid her hand across the smooth wood
surface, as if to extract from it the pleasant memories that had etched
themselves into the wood when she sat there as a young girl. Slowly, Miki
opened the drawer and removed from it the only two objects it contained. One
was a leather-covered diary, the one she had written in when still in high
school, and the second was her graduating year yearbook. Those two objects
defined memories of the only time in her life when she was ever happy.
As she flipped through the pages of her yearbook, she began to recognize
faces. And along with those faces were attached memories, memories that
started to come back to her. She needed something; she was looking for
someone. She sought the person that was closest to her, someone for whom she
cared for. She needed him.
Miki�s bony fingers meticulously traced over every single picture in the
book, her bloodshot eyes gazing at the hundreds of faces that stared back at
her. Motionless faces. However, it was the face that would not be found that
she was seeking. She sought Yuu.
Yuu: the only man she ever loved. How foolish she was back then. To believe
that they would always be together was absurd, and yet she had never thought
an alternative possible after that time in New York. She believed in them as
a couple. In those days, the days of her youth, she believed in many things
that she should never have believed in. If there was one thing she had been
certain of at that pitiful time in her life, it was her love of Yuu, and it
turned out that she was wrong.
It was her fault of course. Although she always wanted him, she always drove
him away. She did not know how to handle her feelings. Ultimately it was
unfair of her to blame herself for their breakup, it was after all a mutual
decision. So why was she beating herself up like this? Why did it end?
When An died, Yuu was no longer the same. At a time when Miki needed his
support the most he, the real Yuu, was no longer there for her. What was
left after An�s death was a different man. And when she needed him, after
that . . . NO! Maybe she was being selfish at the time, but she realized now
that their relationship could not have handled the trauma she went through.
No matter how much she loved him, she . . .
She had but one regret of course, something that had haunted her for her
entire life, and was bound never to leave her till the day they lay her to
rest. It might not seem all that important to anyone else, and yet it was
something that she thought of every day. She had wanted him to be her first.
She always assumed it would simply be that way, and so she never pushed it
on herself to take initiative in their relationship. Since they were never
going to break up, they would eventually elope, it seemed reasonable. But
then it was over, a relationship never to be reconciled. To her that was the
most devastating thought to enter her head, one that would relentlessly
haunt her until her death. It was torture knowing that she would not lose
her virginity to the only man she truly loved.
Akashi turned over on the bed, startling her. She stared at him, like a cat
eyeing it�s pray. He was nothing to her, just like any other man, just like
the man that did take her. As far as she was concerned it could have been
any man, for the only love she wanted could never be.
She turned back to her yearbook, and scanned the photo-laden pages with her
big white eyes. These were all friends whom she had not seen for years. What
was happening to Ginta and Arimi? Were they still together? No. Probably
not. Although 10 years ago she would have been shocked at the news of their
breakup, the world had made Miki realize the harsh realities. They were all
just a bunch of kids back then, they all thought they were on top of the
world and would be so forever. What ever happened to them she wondered. She
often dreamt that they were very successful, living in mansions holding
exclusive parties. She often fantasized about getting invited to their
homes, given a good job maybe, sanctity from her life. How she wished she
could still keep in contact with them, but her work and status was something
she was ashamed of. They could never know.
He fingers flipped through the pages, scanning over more photos. These were
boys and girls with hopes and dreams; hundreds of tiny smiling faces looked
at her. These were all boys and girls that were now men and women. Where did
that time of innocence go? Then, at first not even realizing what it was,
she found a picture of herself. She stared at it for what must have been
twenty minutes. Incredible what 10 years can do to a face she thought, as
she quickly glared at herself in the mirror. Painted with a dumb smile, she
simply looked naive in that old photo. That was the face of a Miki who didn�
t know what it meant to take your clothes off for money. That was the face
of a girl who didn�t know what it was like to be raped. That was the face of
a girl who was so dazzled by the greatness of the world that she was
oblivious to the darkness that lay underneath. It was a horrible picture.
Miki slowly pulled out her black bottle of nail polish. Her trembling
fingers felt the black ridged cap. She caught hold of it, and gently
unscrewed it, removing the brush from its concealment. Placing the long
black cap between thumb and forefinger she dabbed it in the opaque liquid.
It smelt strong and horrible. Miki�s hands moved. The tip of the brush hung
over the picture of the dumb smiling girl, the girl who believed in the
goodness of the world, only to be drawn in by its horrible darkness. The
brush tip dove down, as the bristles grazed over the glossy paper. Miki
smeared the blackened muck on the ugliest, most putrid photo she had ever
seen in her life. Her own face upset her, it terrified her. Grabbing the
yearbook cover, Miki slammed it shut. The polish, not having dried, smeared
and smudged between flattened pages. Miki sobbed, throwing the book back
into the drawer it had so recently been in.
Breathing in hard, Miki could feel the pounding in her chest. The headaches
she was so used to were returning, and she had nothing to make them stop
this time. The clock ticked loudly and the snoring irritated her. What would
she do to sleep? Her eyes met the green book on her table: her diary. This
was the book she wrote in, at the time that photo of hers was taken. Its
contents were a series of letters to her best friend Meiko. Meiko, her only
true friend. And even that relationship was slowly ending. When they were in
high school they used to talk all the time, but after Meiko�s marriage,
obviously their relationship had changed. And yet in those early years they
still managed to exchange letters, and Meiko would even call whenever she
was in Tokyo. Miki would never have to return the favor because she never
left the city. Yet the letters were now few and far between, and Miki had
sworn she had seen Meiko signing autographs at a bookshop and yet she had
never received a call. She could not blame her friend. After all, it was bad
publicity for a famous writer to associate with scum like her.
What had happened to change her? She could not blame it on her bad
experiences, even though it was an easy cop-out. It was her fault in the
end, her fault as a person. She was in actuality nothing more than the husk
of a human being. If you took away the na�ve idiotic soul of the girl that
was Miki Koishikawa you were not left with much were you? Miki laughed. What
did she really think would become of her back then? Did she really think she
�d be a tennis star, or a great cook? Was Yuu going to support her? She was
flawed. When you�re not much of a person to begin with, and you loose all
that you have to hold on to, what�s left?
What is left is a lone girl, crying on her desk, trying to fall asleep.
*****
O.k so I'm sick. Strangely enough there is a reason for writing this fic.
Although my peers don't agree with me, I find Miki's character to be the
most "non-human" of them all. In fact, not counting her enourmous
hyperactivity, and an amazing happy-go lucky attitude, to me she's not much
of anything really. I thought I'd take those two things away from her, and
see what's left. This is basically the result of that experiment. I
seriously hope I'm the only one in the world who's ever thought of this,
and/or attempted it.