Presented herein for your consumption is the first installment of
the Shoujo Kakumei Utena continuation fic, 'Revolution no Mokushiroku
(Revolution's Apocalypse)'
The rest of my writing, and this story, when finished, are
available on my website:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Gulf/4127/Writing/Mywriting.html
C&C is of course welcome.
Disclaimer: Shoujo Kakumei (or Revolutionary Girl, whichever you
prefer) Utena is owned by B-Papas, TV Tokyo, Software Sculptors, and
whatever other parties I might have failed to mention. All rights are
reserved to them.
This story however is mine, and anyone I catch taking it will have
Bif (the obligatory rabid security wombat) set on them.
Revolution no Mokushiroku
by
Douglass Weeks
Moonlight poured down from above, throwing the columns into high
relief and the surrounding buildings into impenetrable shadow.
Her will was not her own as she moved; she was merely an observer
behind her eyes, watching her feet as they slowly stepped forward. She
knew this place, although she wasn't sure how. She passed a fountain,
the water long since stopped flowing, a few inches lying green and
stagnant at the bottom. Yet at the same time she saw the marble
gleaming white, water flying upward in a sparkling arc. From just
behind her ear she heard the smug purr of a well-tuned engine.
Her feet kept moving and she left the fountain behind, an arboretum
sliding into her field of view. If she'd had control of her body she
would've shivered. It was shaped like a birdcage, but the metalwork was
rusted and falling to pieces, the glass opaque with age and dirt.
Several panels were broken, pushed out by gnarled, clutching rose
vines. They were thick, twisted, brown and dead, the few blossom that
still clung to them shriveled and ugly. Despite the bright moon and
broken panels the inside of the arboretum was completely dark, and a
draft blew out through the missing glass that stank of something forever
dead.
Yet on top of that, almost as though she were seeing a separate
image through each eye, she saw the greenhouse how it might have once
been, masses of vibrant roses filling it, the vines that climbed the
glass weighed down with lusciously red flowers. But then the grave
stench filled her nostrils and all that she saw was a thing of death
that promised even worse. Merely passing within sight of the decayed
arboretum was almost enough to make her want to scream, but that wasn't
the worst. That was still to come.
She actively began to fight, to try and regain control of herself,
because she knew if she didn't, she'd go _there_. Her feet pulled her
across another crumbling courtyard, towards a dead forest whose skeletal
branches strained impotently at the sky. A high gate would've barred
access to the forest, except that it had been torn away and lay wrapped
around the battered and rusting hulk of a car.
There was another gate beyond the first, at the end of a walkway
flanked on both sides by pools filled with black and scummy water. It
too lay open and beyond it a spiral stairway clawed upwards through the
top of the forest. The same ancient death fetor that clung to the
arboretum poured down from the stairs with enough strength to stir her
hair.
She would have fallen to the ground gibbering in terror if she'd
been able to. The stench was almost a physical thing, wrapping around
her with clutching fingers that pulled her towards the gate. Every time
she dreamed of this place it pulled her a little closer and somehow she
knew that once it pulled her through the gate and set her foot upon the
stairs she would be gone.
She fought for control with everything she had and finally her body
began to become her own again. Small, strangled sounds of fear began to
slip from her lips and her steps started to slow. Still, it took her
even longer to regain control than it had before, and she was almost
through the gate before she could force her legs to still.
This was the closest she'd ever been to the gate and a few fitful
beams of moonlight penetrated the canopy of branches, casting just
enough light for her to see the stairs until they curved and disappeared
above her head. She heard a noise; something was coming down the stairs
and she knew it was coming for her. The stink became so intense that
she couldn't breathe and she fell to her knees, gagging.
The thing reached the base of the stairs and began slithering
towards her and she could hear a low bubbling hiss as it breathed. The
branches above her shifted, even though there was no wind, throwing more
moonlight down from above, illuminating the thing as it crawled towards
her.
Eiminoujo clapped her hands over her mouth to choke back the scream
that tried to pour out of her throat. Her heart was beating so hard
that it felt like each beat forced her spine to arch. She bit down on
her fingers until the scream was nothing more than a whimper, and then
took her hand away with a shuddering breath as the dream and the terror
drained away. She'd been having that dream frequently. For as long as
she could remember she'd dreamt of a grandiose, yet decrepit palace, but
they'd neither been particularly frequent nor vivid until she'd turned
fourteen. That was when in her dreams she'd no longer wandered
aimlessly though crumbling hallways and rotting classrooms. It was when
she'd turned fourteen that she first felt the inexorable pull towards
the arboretum, and then the forest.
As she tried to lull herself back to sleep, Eiminoujo heard her
mother moaning in the next room. She seemed to have been having bad
dreams more frequently than usual as well.
She rolled onto her side and curled up, clutching a stuffed monkey
to her chest. She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the cries coming
from the next room. At one point she was sure that she heard her mother
call someone's name, but after that she was silent.
Eiminoujo held the stuffed animal a little tighter and clenched her
eyes, but sleep was long in coming.
She awoke shortly after dawn, stray sunbeams sneaking in through
chinks in the blinds and prodding at her eyes. Her eyes felt grainy and
strained as she slowly opened them, and the inside of her head had that
stuffed with cotton feel that came from getting too little sleep.
She stumbled into the bathroom, cursing as only a small trickle of
tepid water issued from the tap. She cupped her hands and let it
collect for several seconds, then splashed it against her face. She
didn't even bother trying the toilet. If they were lucky they might be
able to hassle the landlord into repairing the pipes within a couple of
days.
She went into the kitchen and began preparing breakfast, dipping
into one of the pitchers of water in the refrigerator that was reserved
for just such a circumstance. She heard her mother rise, and put a
kettle on stove for her.
By the time Utena entered the kitchen, breakfast was already on the
table and a cup of tea was steeped and ready. "Morning, Eimi," Utena
mumbled. No one called Eimi by her full name, not even her mother. It
was difficult to pronounce and sounded awkward as well, but by the
occasional, fragmented explanation, she'd had deliberate intentions when
she'd given her daughter a name that could be read as 'the princess of
eternal sleep.'
Utena didn't look like she'd slept well either. Her eyes seemed
exceptionally large and her hair was mussed. Her mother's hair
fascinated Eimi. It was a shade of blond so pale as to be almost
white. Some days, like this one, it caught the light in such a way as
to appear a pale shade of pink. Her own hair was a more normal shade of
near black, although from time to time it seemed to have odd purple and
even silver highlights. She supposed that that came from her father,
not that she knew much about him. Although she barely knew anything
about her mother either. Utena almost always refused steadfastly to
talk about her past, especially prior to when Eimi was born. Eimi had
tried to do some searching on her own, but always failed to find
anything predated her own birth record. About all that she knew about
her mother was that Utena was close to thirty, which meant that she
couldn't have been more than fifteen when Eimi had been born. She'd
never finished school and managed to provided for herself and Eimi
through a series of menial jobs that barely provided enough to get by
on.
That was why the two of them lived in a rat hole of an apartment
where the plumbing didn't work more often than not. Why Eimi worked
after school as a stock girl in the run down local conbini, instead of
being in the theater club. Her mother forbade her to do it, but like
most things, her mother forgot that particular edict, maybe even that
Eimi had a job, before to long. Her mother rarely seemed to remember
anything for to long because her mother really wasn't all there.
Utena had quickly finished her first cup of tea and was already
almost done with the second. With a sigh Eimi put another kettle on the
stove. Her mother was having one of her moods again. "Drinking all
that tea isn't good for you," she said, more out of habit than anything
else.
"We promised each other," Utena began, starting on another cup,
"that we would drink tea together." She seemed to be talking to
herself, and Eimi momentarily considered asking about her father again.
Utena occasionally seemed to be more tractable when she was in one of
her moods, but sometimes her answers were more frightening than her
silence.
According to Utena, Eimi had been a virgin birth. Her father had
been a beautiful but cold man with scarlet hair and a well hidden but
tender heart. Her father was the darkness given body. Her father was a
prince on a white horse who wanted to save all the girls of the world.
Her father was a woman, a princess forever held captive that her mother
had failed to save.
"I'm off to school now, I'll see you this evening," Eimi said,
pausing at the door.
Utena didn't seem to hear her and as Eimi closed the door behind
her, she saw her mother reach out, as if to someone sitting on the other
side of the table. "Someday, shine with me."
Eimi walked alone to school. She had no real friends and although
the other students didn't outright avoid her, then never got too close
either. She didn't mind, too much.
"Good morning Tenjou-san," a voice said behind Eimi, stopping her
in the hall.
"Good morning Souji-sensei," she replied, turning with a bow.
"How is your mother this morning?" he asked mildly.
"The same," Eimi replied. The teacher might be the one link that
Eimi had to finding out her mother's past, although for the most part he
was just as closemouthed about the past as she was. He inquired after
Utena each morning and at first Eimi had thought that he'd had a
romantic interest in her; he seemed to be only a few years older than
her mother, but then one day he'd let slip that he'd once know Utena,
from before.
The day after, he'd shone up at the apartment and had a long
conversation with her mother in private. Eimi hadn't been able to hear
what they'd said, and his visit had ended with her mother in hysterics,
screaming 'that she should've driven the sword through his heart!'
After that, he'd never tried to talk to Utena in person again, or said
anything further about how they'd known each other from before, but he
did inquire after her health each morning,
"That is something, I suppose. I'll see you in class then," he
said with a nod then turned back down the hall. Eimi watched him for a
few moments. He had hair very much like her mother's and as the thought
suddenly struck her, she wondered if maybe the two of them might be
related.
She chewed the idea for several moments and then discarded it. The
only similarity between Souji and her mother was their hair, and for
some reason, the thought just felt like it was wrong. Although, she
realized, they both did have a certain manner about them, a sense of
being somewhere else even as they stood right in front of you. However,
the sensation was never as strong with Souji as it was with her mother,
although there had been a couple of times when he'd thought that he was
alone and she'd heard him muttering about 'preparing the way before
them.'
She sighed and tried to dismiss the whole matter. None of it
really mattered, notin a world as messed up and unfair as this one. She
knew that better than most. In a fair world she wouldn't have to put in
eight hours at a convenience store every day in order to make sure that
the rent was paid on time and there was food in the fridge. In a fair
world, she wouldn't have to be mother to her own mother, making sure
that she got up and off to work most days.
During class she gave her teacher only half an ear. The woman was
enjoining them all to work hard if they wanted to pass the entrance
exams for a good high school. Eimi had neither the time nor the money
to take cram classes to ensure she got into a decent high school, and no
college worth the effort would want anything to do with her. She was
beginning to have trouble seeing the point of even staying in school at
all. If she dropped out then she at least could get another job and
could afford to move to an apartment that at least had reliable
plumbing.
Eimi sighed. The only way in which she didn't see her life turning
out exactly like her mother's was that she wasn't pregnant at fourteen.
She let her eyes drift out the window and her breath caught in her
throat. The school courtyard was gone. The arboretum from her dreams
was there instead, two people standing in front of it; a girl in a
delicate, frilly dress with her hair drawn back in a bun, and a young
man in an ornate white uniform whose long hair spilled down his back.
He pushed the girl back against the glass door, and his hand rose, the
fingers rigid. Eimi slapped her hands down on her desk, rising to her
feet. "Saionji, don-!"
"Is there some problem?" the teacher demanded, and Eimi blinked,
realizing that she'd half risen from her seat. The vista out the window
was gone, and all that Eimi saw were the few scraggly trees and ill kept
grass that were always there. "I-I'm sorry," she stammered, sitting
back down. "I had a ... back spasm. It won't happen again." The other
students were staring at her, and Eimi felt a blush creeping up her
cheeks.
She glanced back out the window, but there was nothing to indicate
that anything unusual had ever been out there. Who had those people
been? She was sure that she hadn't ever seen either of them before, but
as she was leaping to her feet she knew that it'd been the boy's name
about to cross her lips.
A few girls in the back of the room were whispering and shooting
smirking glances her way, but after a few seconds the rest of the
students again treated her as if she wasn't actually there. Maybe she
wasn't. Maybe, like her mother, she wasn't all there, except that in
her case, it was physically.
The thought stayed with Eimi throughout the day. There was
something inexplicably attractive about the idea that maybe she wasn't
really there at all. Maybe she was just someone's daydream, and that
was why she kept seeing the ancient palace, the nonexistent people,
because she only existed inside someone else's mind and sometimes they
dreamed of other things.
Souji-sensei noticed her distraction and pulled her aside at the
end of his class. "Is there something bothering you, Tenjou-san?" he
asked. Even when trying to show concern his voice retained a cool and
distant quality. The only time she that could remember hearing anything
that even approached genuine emotion enter his voice had been the night
that he'd confronted her mother.
"Mom had a difficult night last night. She was having tea when I
left this morning." Souji understood the reference. Eimi had explained
to him before about her mother's tendency to spend the entire day
staring over a cup of tea at someone who wasn't there. "Souji-sensei,
do you know what she meant by, 'someday, shine with me?'"
He got a distant look in his eyes, as if some far distant vista had
appeared at the edge of his sight. "You may call me Mikage, when we're
alone. No, I don't know what your mother meant, but I think that I
understand the sentiment. Once, there was someone who I thought shone,
but in the end..." he trailed off and the look in his eyes became even
more far off. "Utena and I attended school together."
Eimi blinked, never having expected Mikage to venture such
information so freely. "Really, where?"
Mikage was completely oblivious to everything around him now, and
Eimi couldn't fight the unsettling feeling that he was fading away
before her eyes. "Someplace... somewhere where the dead may be alive
again..."
Eimi felt the air stir across the back of her neck and an
unspeakable odor curled in her nostrils. "They think that you may be
capable of obtaining eternity," a soft voice said directly behind her.
Eimi whirled and for a second, out of the corner of her eye, she thought
she saw a young boy with his nose buried in the petals of a black rose.
However, when she'd fully turned, there was no one there. Even the
smell was gone.
"Was there anything else?" Mikage asked and Eimi was sure that she
heard the barest tremor in his tone. She turned back around and saw by
his eyes that whatever it been he'd seen, it was gone again.
"No," Eimi said, a trifle unsteadily. The look on his face forbade
her from voicing the questions she'd hoped he'd answer. "I'll see you
tomorrow." The hairs along the back of her neck didn't settle until she
was far away from the school.
Eimi massaged her aching hand as she walked home, the bag
containing dinner clutched tightly beneath her arm. She'd dropped a
beverage case on her hand while stocking a cooler and a dark bruise
extended from her knuckles to her wrist. Her ears still blistered from
the manager's tirade about not being more careful, because she might've
broken a bottle, not because she hurt herself.
A block from the apartment, Eimi paused, cocking her head to
listen. "No, oh no," she moaned, then broke into a run. Her mother was
out on the balcony, shaking her fist at the sky.
"I know you're out there, I can feel you!" Utena shouted. "You
can't have her, I'll never let you have her!"
There was a small crowd of gawkers on the street below and Eimi had
to elbow her way through them to get through to the door. She ran into
the landlord halfway up the stairs. "Get her off of there," the old man
crabbed. "She's been shouting at nothing since this afternoon."
"Fix the pipes," Eimi snapped back, pushing past. She turned on
the lights as she walked into the apartment and put the bag down on the
kitchen table. Tea was scattered across the counter and water from a
spilled kettle pooled on the floor. Eimi yanked open the balcony door
and stormed out. "Mother, get back in. You're making a scene."
Utena didn't seem to hear her and continued to scream obscenities
at the stars. At patience end Eimi grabbed her mother by the arm and
dragged her back inside. Utena seemed surprise to see her and threw her
arms around Eimi and began sobbing. "You didn't come home. I was so
afraid that he might've found you."
"Who?" Eimi demanded crossly.
Utena's eyes darted towards the sky. "Him, the morning star."
Eimi ground her teeth in frustration. She should've known better
than to expect her mother to make any sense. "I was at work, the same
place I am every evening. I don't suppose you went to work today, did
you?"
Utena looked taken aback. "I was having tea with... with..." her
expression seemed to deflate. "I was having tea..."
"I noticed. You left it scattered across the kitchen. I'll get
started on dinner." Eimi turned on the television and then tossed the
remote at her mother. "Why don't you watch your programs until it's
ready?"
Utena's expression turned to indignation and she looked up, meeting
Eimi's eyes. For a moment her eyes were windows to the depths of
eternity and in them Eimi saw sorrow and despair more than any human
could bear. Then the moment passed and all she saw in her mother's
blurry blue eyes were tears.
Shaken, Eimi turned and went to the kitchen. As she set the table,
she wondered if maybe her mother's madness was genetic. She was already
seeing and hearing things that weren't really there, maybe she was going
mad too. But Souji-sensei had seen something too that afternoon.
So maybe he was loosing it too. There was definitely something
strange about Mikage, although he wasn't as far gone as her mother was.
Eimi glanced towards the balcony, wondering what had prompted her mother
to go out there in the first place. Utena hated going outside under the
open sky, almost to the point of agoraphobia, especially at night when
the stars were out. For some reason Utena seemed to both hate and be
terrified by them. On more than one occasion she'd seen her mother
staring up towards the sky while muttering about 'having touched the
heavens and found them false.'
Dinner proceeded as usual, with almost no conversation, although
Utena seemed to be more in touch than usual, helping clean up
afterwards. "Please remember to go to work tomorrow," Eimi enjoined
her. "I can't support the both of us if you loose your job, again."
Utena seemed to be on the point of crying. "You are the only good
thing to have come from that place. Please, be careful. You're all
that is keeping me from going back."
"Back where?" Eimi asked but Utena didn't reply and the look in her
eyes hinted at hidden depths of pain and suffering. Eimi shivered and
let the matter drop.
Utena was in her robe, sitting at the kitchen table with another
cup of tea when Eimi went to bed. "Please don't stay up too late, okay
mom?"
Utena smiled wanly and set her cup down as Eimi closed her door and
shut off the lights. Faint starlight spilled in through the window and
for some reason it made Eimi's skin crawl. She shared a small fraction
of her mother's fear and nebulous resentment of the heavens, although
she didn't understand why. She still felt a vague uneasiness as she
closed the blinds and burrowed beneath the covers, and pulled her stuff
monkey in with her. "Maybe I really am going crazy if I still have to
sleep with you, Chuchu," Eimi told the monkey, using the nonsensical
name that her mother had bequeathed the doll with. She pressed her face
against the back of its head and slowly drifted off to sleep.
The dream started almost instantly. This time she began right in
front of the forest, almost through the first gate. She barely had time
for thought before the invisible hand squeezed her almost too tightly to
breathe and yanked her forward. Something lurking by the base of the
curving staircase chuckled as it pulled her in and the death stench that
poured from the gates was tinged with anticipation.
There was a flash of steel and a sword cut the stones at her feet,
the invisible hand vanishing. An almost fleshless hand grasped the
sword's hilt, the arm it was attached to disappearing back into shadow,
although Eimi saw a hint of tattered white sleeve, which for some reason
reminded her of the uniform that the boy she'd seen this morning wore.
"Always the chivalrous one," muttered a dead, wounded voice from
the thing waiting by the stairs.
"You can't be allowed to have her," replied the figure in the
shadows, in a voice that sounded like pride eternally broken.
"You risk my wrath Kiryuu, be wary."
"What can you do to me, that I have not already suffered? You are
powerless without her and I will see that you remain that way. No
matter the cost."
"I haven't even started with you Kiryuu. Interfere with me again
and you shall know how terrible my wrath can be."
A hand suddenly closed around Eimi's shoulders from behind. "You
can't have her!" a familiar voice proclaimed and the black clothed arm
hugged Eimi tightly. Another arm slid around her side, this one holding
an ornate sword with a rose worked hilt.
The thing by the stairs hissed and threw itself forward and the
sword flashed down, cutting through the fabric of the dream.
Eimi's eyes shot open and she sat up, knocking Chuchu to the
floor. There was someone in the room with her and as her eyes adjusted,
Eimi found herself staring at her mother, only as she must have appeared
fifteen years ago. Her hair reached midway down her back and her eyes
were wide, blue and without guile. She wore a black jacket and red
pants and in her hand she gripped the rose worked sword from Eimi's
dream. "M-mother," Eimi stammered, and the image was gone. She got up,
moving carefully into the hall. She heard a noise from her mother's
room and slid open the door.
Utena was crying in her sleep, tear tracks glimmering along her
cheeks in the faint starlight. "Oh Touga," she cried softly, "what has
he done to you?" She had one hand clenched tightly in a fist and as she
cried her fingers slipped open and something fell from her palm, making
a metallic _ching_ as it struck the floor. The object rolled across the
room, bumping into Eimi's toe. She bent down to examine it and realized
that it was a ring.
It lay cold and heavy in her palm, a thick, silver band capped by
an ornately worked enamel rose. She closed her fingers around it in a
tight fist, a gesture which she found strangely reassuring. She returned
to her room and climbed back into bed, staring at the ring until she
fell back asleep.
Eimi left for school early the next morning. She wanted to talk
with Mikage about the ring, and possibly her dream as well. For some
reason she felt that having the ring would make him more forthcoming.
She arrived at school even before the sports clubs started their morning
practices and went straight to the teachers' room. Mikage wasn't there,
but a still steaming cup of coffee indicated that he he'd probably
return soon. She clutched the ring tightly but as she approached
Mikage's desk it almost seemed to jump and slipped from her grasp. Eimi
dropped to her knees and tried to grab it, but it rolled underneath
Mikage's desk and she had to stretch to reach it. As she pulled it out
her hand brushed something tucked away into the space where the bottom
drawer should've been.
She pulled the object from its hiding place and discovered that it
was a thick, well worn binder. She flipped through it, discovering that
it held a hundred or so pages, each one containing a hand drawing, and
one or more photos, and was filled with cramped handwriting that she
recognized as being Mikage's. There was a pocket in the back, and in
it she discovered a ring, cracked through the center and in two pieces,
almost a mirror of the one she held, save for that this one was done in
black iron and onyx. She quickly put the ring back, holding it, for
some reason, made the nape of her neck crawl like someone was running
their nails across a blackboard.
She went back through the binder examining the pictures. Each one
seemed to be of a young man and the photograph was always a close, but
not perfect, resemblance to the hand drawing, as if each were of two
closely related boys. Above each drawing was the word 'dead,' although
from the rest of the notes seemed to indicate that the boy was still
very much alive. However, as she flipped through, she noticed that
nearly a third included a second 'dead' heading above the photograph,
this one including a subheading of 'suicide' along with a date and brief
description. An unsettling number seemed to have willingly burned
themselves to death.
Then Eimi came across an entry that made her pause. 'Mikage Souji,
Graduated.' Again there was a hand drawing, and Eimi imagined that the
cold, arrogant visage was how he had appeared as a young man. The
'graduated' was written with such force that the thick paper was
actually torn in a place, and Eimi, curious, began to read the notes
that went along with it.
She understood very little of it. The writing mostly seemed to be
existential musings about eternity, but as she read on it also described
a place, a school, and with a start Eimi realized that it sounded
exactly like the palace in her dreams.
"What are you doing?"
Eimi looked up and saw Mikage looming over her, and for a second
his eyes were open and in them she saw bottomless hatred, and total, all
consuming arrogance, then he blinked and when he opened his eyes again
they were back to normal.
"How did you find this?" he demanded, snatching the binder from her
hands.
"I dropped my ring and it rolled under your desk. When I picked it
up, I found that."
"What ring?"
Reluctantly, Eimi opened her hand and showed him the rose crest.
His face went pale and the binder slipped from his grasp, a few loose
pictures fluttering free. "Where did you get that?"
"My mother had it. I had a dream last night, and so did she, about
that place you described in that notebook. What is it?"
"Give me the ring," Mikage demanded.
"Why?"
"Because it's his sign, how he marks you," Mikage said, baring his
teeth and hissing. "Give it to me!"
"No."
"It has to be destroyed. I told her she had to destroy it, that as
long as she held it he could reach through."
Eimi shook her head and began to back up. "No, you can't, this is,
this is..." She had a sudden flash of understanding and extended her
finger.
"NO!" Mikage shouted, lunging forward as Eimi slipped the rose
crest over her finger.
--To be continued
Thank you for your time,
-Douglass Weeks
___________________________________________________________________________
Soldiers live. And wonder why.
The secret of being a child is never knowing that you will one day die.
The secret of being an adult is never forgetting that you once were
immortal.
"I'm not your worldly passion! I'm a guy with issues that need
resolving!"
"Looking back, I realize that I sold my soul for a pack of cigarettes.
Of course, I can comfort myself in that she also gave me a lighter."
Generic Anime Villain: "Ha! Foolish woman! What do you think you can do
to me with that puny wooden sword?"
Bystander: "Dude, you are so cut in half!"
Sandra: Actually, the RDF command tried to conceal the Zentraedi
invasion as well.
Matt: They must have felt mighty stupid when four million-odd ships
showed up.
Sandra: They did. Briefly.
Would the Japanese Emperor know that we children our bowing our heads to
him? ...he may be eating his breakfast... or he may be in the toilet...
and I can't help giggling about the picture conjured up by the last
image... the Emperor is in the toilet and somebody knocks on the door
and says, "Your Majesty, Your Majesty! The children, the children! They
are bowing to Your Majesty!"... and the Emperor says "Wait a minute!
Wait a minute! I have my pants down!"
-Richard Kim "Lost Names"