Nogizaka Sayuri
Dream Aoyama ~ Joanna’s Residence
Morning
Whether it was Joanna’s nature, or simply an act of fate, it seemed that from the very moment you had met each other, some sort of string of destiny had tied the two of you together. Emerging from the hospital together, Joan shielding her eyes from the harsh natural light of the sun, you had finally taken the time to figure out more about the “ghost city” your other self had seemingly sent you to.
It was on an island.
Surrounded by water on all sides, and filled with bizarre sights like western castles that didn’t even fit the time period, let alone Japan, the “city” that had become your sanctuary was certainly, absolutely, definitely...
Haunted to the point where you would almost call it purgatory.
The shopkeepers were ghosts, the citizens were ghosts, the police were ghosts, the doctors were ghosts...
On and on, with only a few other “alive” humans in the city, Joan had naturally taken responsibility for the current situation without hesitating, and thus, the two of you had wound up sharing space in a borrowed apartment.
...It looked just like her old one, except this one had two beds and a balcony.
Much larger than the usual Japanese apartment (unsurprising, because this seemed almost like a separate ‘world’ altogether) she had cheerfully invited you to stay with her until everything with your father’s ghost, as well as the Demon you had seen had been sorted out, and, unable to refuse...
You had accepted.
It was the day after that first day, and you had awoken early, much earlier than Joan...
Who had, in contrast to her usual self, woken up with a borderline braindead sort of grogginess. One hand over her face, her long, somewhat messy golden hair splayed out over a t-shirt and shorts, the young woman hadn’t seemed to see you at first, walking past your bed into the kitchen, and going for the coffee maker with a single-minded determination that most would either find impressive...
Or pitiful...
“Alright-! Looks like it’s time for breakfast!”
But the coffee had brought her back to life, so-!
Hair still messy, but youthful smile cheerful, less pale than the day before, the grinning young woman looks back at you with bright eyes.
“There anything in particular you want? It’s kind of like a sleepover, so I figure I should be a good host-!”
...Her natural urges still seemed to be to look out for you.
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It was strange. It was a feeling of happiness, ever so present: when we walked together out of the hospital, when she invited me to remain by her side, when we found this place to stay, everything, down to the most trivial things such as merely hearing Joan’s footsteps, brought a profound sense of joy.
And yet, there was a certain sensation of unease which persisted. Like an awkward air hanging over every instant we shared.
Was it just me? Maybe. The idea that we were in a town filled with deceased people… perhaps that I just couldn’t come to terms with it. What if we too were… just like them? I could feel my body, I could feel Joan, I could feel alive, but…
… no, it didn’t matter. Our state doesn’t matter. We can move, we can smile, we can talk. That is all we need for now.
Now…
“I want you to be fine! That’s all I really need…”
Yes, seeing her so much better, so much lively now compared to back then at the hospital… it was all so pleasant. This pretty figure of hers, I wanted to restore it to an even greater shine. Joan was a gorgeous woman, her blonde strands of hair and white supple skin more precious than gold, reflecting the morning sunlight so beautifully…
“... does… d-does brushing your hair count as helping you feel better?”
The question slipped out of my mouth, Nogizaka Sayuri uttering like an idiot without thinking. But that idiot does not regret asking it, no. I might be feeling ashamed, not even able to look straight at Joan, but I am already happy, because I know that she will answer yes. Well, hopefully.
Or I’ll just look like an idiot… but then, once again, I am an idiot...
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"H-Huh?"
For a moment, your question seems to catch the older girl off guard. Not one to be particularly concerned with her appearance in the mornings due to usually being by herself during them, the young knight hadn’t even noticed how messy and out of place everything had gotten in her sleep, and...
“Yeah, I think that might be nice.”
Her smile had deepened, and a tinge of red, just the slightest, as if she had realized the warmth and was doing her best to not show it too much, had appeared in her face.
It had certainly caught her off guard.
“But my hair isn’t anything special really, but um... If you want too, yeah, I’d be happy with it! I’m not very good at it myself, I just pull it back into a ponytail, and I know that’s probably bad for a girl to only have one style, but... Um... One second.”
A bit of nervous rambling, punctuated with a brief disappearance into the bathroom, and a reappearance with a brush and comb.
Lacking any real chairs, or really, and places to sit other than the beds themselves, the knight seems to ponder her options for a bit before...
“...Okay-!”
She sits down right in front of you, facing you for just a moment, before spinning her body in place, back pressed lightly against your knees.
“I’ll make something to eat later on.”
Composure regained, it seems she has absolutely no trouble entrusting you with her back.
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Is this…?
She did it without standing on ceremony or any special words. She didn’t say too much, no, she just… brought what was needed and entrusted herself to me, even giving me her back.
Even though I had come to understand Joan, understand myself a little more… it was still hard to not be taken aback. Maybe a mouth let agap for a small instant, a confused look as my eyes fixated on her beautiful nape… I clearly showed a moment of cluelessness -- luckily, she had her back turned to me, and at worst all she could realize was that I had been unmoving for a small lapse of time.
In the end, I still hadn’t gotten used to being trusted so easily, without hesitation or second thoughts.
But I had made her wait enough. It is time for me to get to work. First of all, it seems like Joan is the kind to get a lot of rebellious bed hair, and that naturally, while it appears glossy and smooth, there is a certain curly nature to it. Ah… the feeling of my fingers running amidst these silky strands of blonde hairs is euphoric...
Ahem.
Untangling her hair is a little bit uncomfortable; I’ve never had experience with other people’s hair other than my brother’s and my own… and our hair is extremely straight and unlikely to get tangled on its own. Worst, while she’s remaining perfectly still and silent, I swear that I could have gone a little bit too hard at times and accidentally caused her some pain by pulling some hair out.
It felt… unfortunate… sad… perhaps, I even felt a little bit angry at myself for being so inexperienced, for being unable to adapt.
But then my fingers swam in these silky golden strands once again and I feel like forgetting everything…
“I-I’m sorry if it hurts a bit… I’m not used to handling curly hair too much.”
I say that apologetically, as I truly feel sorry… but then being able to do this makes me so happy. For may hands to be able to shape and beautify Joan’s hair, to give her haircut this smooth, seamless, brilliant appearance… I could do this all day.
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Momentarily lost in reverie, it’s only when you once again attempt to shake yourself out of it, that you notice a light sound, something soft and pleasant, moving through the otherwise silent air. It’s not the sound of cheering birds outside or the music of a distant radio, it’s something closer to you, something a bit more... Unique.
Yes.
While you hadn’t noticed up until now, being caught up completely in your task.
Joan had been humming lightly to herself the whole time.
It’s a song you don’t recognize, at least not specifically, and while you are unable to see her eyes, she has already closed them as a sort of side-effect of getting a bit to “caught up in the moment.” There had been times where you had pulled a bit too hard yes, you could feel it when it happened, but...
She didn’t seem bothered by it.
With no one else having touched her hair for almost ten years now, the unfamiliar sensation is something she can’t exactly call unpleasant. It was relaxing in many ways, as was the feeling of just loosening the knight persona and putting herself into a friend’s hands, and thus...
While she can’t say exactly why she’s enjoying it so much, the experience was apparently pleasant enough that the humming had her vibrating ever so slightly with positivity.
When you stop to make your apology, that positive feeling doesn’t fade.
“It’s fine,” voice light, the young woman wisely keeps her gaze straight ahead, “My sis was pretty rough with my hair as well when we were kids, it’s a nice feeling in it’s own way. There’s no need to apologize.”
Her voice had a strangely dream-like vibe to it.
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“Teehee…”
The idiot Nogizaka Sayuri lets out a small, innocent sound. Was that a laugh? Probably, the times she laughed were so sparse that an idiot like her hasn’t exactly put her finger on what it is that makes a laugh. An expression of joy? A sound one makes when they’re positive? Brother laughed all the time when he was with me, and that felt contagious, to the point where I’d laugh too, banishing away all gloom, all sadness. Mine was very different though, it was weak, uncertain laugh, like a leaf blown by the wind.
Yet that little sound which escaped my lips was palpable, very well present -- genuine.
It is my happiness given form, given reality. It is the manifestation of my joy, freed from the shackles of my body and flying away like a bird.
That little chuckle is all I decide to release, however. To hear Joan’s hum, to see that she is enjoying all this… only makes me even happier, if such a thing could be possible. I would hum in gladness alongside her, since her tune has a mysteriously enticing air to it, but then, I’m not really confident in my vocal chords being able to produce something pleasant sound; I’ve always been a silent girl, after all… I never ever tried singing.
Brother would sing me songs, and now, Joan was giving me a music of her own… and I’d never give them anything back...
Oh.
Right.
Siblings. I have a brother, but Joan also has a sister. I had talked to her, she seemed like a nice person. Different from Joan, but kind in her own way.
Joan had told me that she couldn’t muster the courage to talk to her… and that left me puzzled. They were there, in the same room, siblings that obviously cared for each other… and yet… there was like this strange wall between the two of them -- a barrier that could not be seen, but felt… it was sad to see. The Joan that I thought I knew would have talked to her immediately… but back then… she just stayed silent: she couldn’t bring herself to talk to her own sister…
This wasn’t a case like between me and Father. There was something else bothering them.
Ah, now I’ve ruined it. Even though my eyes look at the beautiful sight of Joan’s golden hair as I brush it as smooth and straight as I can, my mind is now elsewhere, thinking about this dilemma.
I had somewhat forgotten about it, tucked it in a corner of my head so that I’d just enjoy what was happening between us.
But I did say that I wanted Joan to ‘be fine’. Was she really fine when she didn’t even talk to her sister?
This isn’t something that I should be asking. A person that killed their own Mother and attempted patricide shouldn’t be dipping their hands into another’s family history… and yet… I can’t stop myself. My mind is telling me ‘no, stop Sayuri, you have no right to do something like that,’ but my body doesn’t obey. It’s as if these golden strands of hair that have been made silkier and more resplendent than anything have mesmerized me...
My lips move against my command, a voice which is mine leaves my mouth, uttering a question that Nogizaka Sayuri would've never asked.
“You said your sister… that reminds me, are you sure we shouldn’t visit her and say hi?”
Joan had probably heard part of our exchange back in the hospital, she even probably knew that I had a piece of paper with her sister’s address in here… and yet, she didn’t ask me anything about it. It was obvious that she wanted nothing to do with her sister.
And yet, here I was here, Nogizaka Sayuri, the idiot, asking an idiot’s question.
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This time, the question is accompanied by the sound of silence.
Having persisted until now, a perpetual good mood leading her on to higher and higher levels of cheer, this simple question, one that shouldn’t really mean anything bad...
“...”
Causes her to stop.
While you still can’t see her eyes, everything about her pose had changed from relaxed to...
Contemplative.
The free-roaming mind had suddenly been forced to focus on something it had been trying to forget, and in that focus, to her, everything seems to get a bit darker.
...It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.
Silent now, but only for a few seconds, the girl is strangely unable to recover as fast as she normally would; deflecting the question like she had back in the hospital room, no...
A feeling like static running across the surface of her thoughts as her mind replays the inquiry, for a moment...
She can swear that...
Something like this had happened before...
It certainly hadn’t; Sayuri had definitely never asked her this question under these circumstances but...
She has to shake off a nagging sense of “familiarity.”
Even so...
“...I’m not strong enough to go see her yet.”
Knowing that you might take a pure silence too badly, the young woman decides to answer your question in order to prove that she’s not exactly angry about the whole thing, just...
Sad...
“Our parents died... So she always had to watch out for me when we were kids... I cried a lot, hid behind her legs, and she got hurt protecting me more than once from youkai... I think she just got tired of it one day and left; I couldn’t help her, I was just a burden... The church took me in after that.”
A short and simple explanation, but one that bears a certain distortion that’s obvious even to you.
“...The last few days have shown me I’m still too weak to be useful to her... So there’s no point in me going to see her, it would just burden her again.”
While she said it as if she was sure it was true, you…
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An awkward silence settled in. Joan’s humming had stopped, her shoulder muscles seemed to tense slightly as they went from soft and relaxed to showing a slightest bit of contraction... even her hair seems to have lost some of its lustrous shine, it is even as if the light illuminating this room has been somehow dimmed.
It was as the idiot wanted after all, wasn’t it? The consequences of asking such a question did not take much to figure out. In a sense, the idiotic Nogizaka Sayuri wanted just that, to kill the mood, to remove all pleasantness and replace the cheery air with a stale sense of gloom.
But it had been determined that to keep whatever she cherished, at some points, that idiotic girl would have to be very selfish.
“I’m sorry… but that’s not true.”
I softly wrap my hands around her as my press my head against hers, and as my face buried itself in the hair I just worked on to polish, the perfumed scent of Joan’s morning shampoo invades my sense smell.
A hug, that is what Brother gave me whenever I felt down. I was once told: “do to others what you wish they’d do to you”… if a hug gives me happiness, if someone else pressing themselves against me in a gentle, affectionate way, is sufficient to comfort me, to shoo away all my insecurities… then that’s what I should do if I want Joan ‘to be fine’.
“You protected me all this time, you took care of this useless, weak person that I am… in my eyes you are more than strong enough. You are the strongest.”
That’s just how things are. She is the one who holds this world upon which I walk at this moment. I have no one else to go to, I have no one else to rely on.
But more than that…
“You can’t be useless. If you are useless then… what am I?”
What am I really, if she is useless? The question is frightening, and its answer is not something I want to hear.
No.
This isn’t about me, this is about Joan.
“You taught me that people aren’t merely tools… you taught me that more than just being weapons or purposes, people can do so much more than destroy and protect. A person can make another happy, just like how you made me happy, just like how you accepted me even though I am just a useless tool whose only purpose is to exorcise spirits.”
It is still hard for me to believe in such a conviction, but because of Joan, I do my best to believe in it, and if I am doing it… then she’d better do it, or else… what… what would I do?
Oh no, my grip is tightening… what… what am I doing? Why do I feel like crying…
“Please... don’t ever say that you are useless… she is your sister, isn’t she? I too had a sibling… he loved me, he took care of me, even till the very end, when I was utterly useless… then…”
Then it has to be the same between you two, right? She wasn’t like Dad, no… Joan’s sister… she reminded me so much… of Brother…
...I-I’m such a miserable thing... sobbing... I’ll get... Joan’s hair messed up…
Ahhh...
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She hadn’t said anything throughout your speech.
Gaze focused on the far wall, eyes that had been reminded of countless failures aimed down so as not to reveal themselves to you, the young woman that had thought too hard about everything, that had been on the verge of tears herself...
“...!”
Can’t help but breathe in instinctively, surprised, as you cry not just for what you lost, but for the things she had believed she had lost.
Someone was crying for her.
Someone believed in her this much.
The body clinging to her back is shaking, the mood that had been so cheerful mere minutes before has turned completely on itself, and...
She can’t take it.
While you had been hugging her from behind, putting your all into reinforcing something with your body that you had been trying to put into words, the girl whose body had gone slack, who had, with a pure but selfish relief allowed someone to comfort her...
Lightly shifts in your grip, spinning her body around to face you, and drawing you closer into a deeper embrace.
...It was both impulsive and reckless.
The day before she had been hesitant to touch you, unsure of how you would react to it, but sobbing into her back, into her hair, the woman gives into her protective instincts, tears shining in her eyes, but her tall, stronger body pulling you closer, one hand around your back, the other lightly resting on the back of your head as you cried.
She wasn’t sure it would work, in fact it might even backfire, after all, it had only been a few days since your original meeting, but-
“I’m sorry.”
-Holding you didn’t feel wrong.
Once again, she gets the feeling of something like this happening before, not in a hotel room, but rather...
Beneath a forest of Sakura Trees...
It’s vague like a faded memory trying to resurface but...
Right now.
The real thing was far more important to her.
“You’re right... I shouldn’t talk that way.”
She was far to judgemental of her own self.
Any failure of her self was something that she took hard, like a hammer to glass; she had always felt it hammering down on her, things she could never have stopped, things she had succeeded at but could have done better.
Failing you during the battle with the Azure Knight.
Almost too late to rescue you from your father.
All of these things had reinforced her own self-doubt but...
Throughout it all... You believed in her.
All she had done was what she believed any person should do, reach out and help someone who was hurting, but...
That action had become someone’s light.
The light of the girl in her arms.
“I’m not the strongest... But... You’re right... She is my sister. Ignoring her... That’s not the way to do things.”
She’s afraid she’ll be rejected a second time.
Waking up to find your only remaining family member gone, that blow, amongst the storm of her parents deaths, of that awful orphanage, had certainly driven a stake into her psyche but...
This girl was crying for her.
She had sincerely smiled and said that she only wanted her to be happy.
There was no hidden motive there, that affection was pure, and...
This warmth was special, that honest faith, coming from a girl who had known nothing other than sadness...
That urge, the desire to protect her rare smile, came not from her duties as a Knight...
But from herself as a person.
“So... No more crying okay? Seeing you cry for me is... Well, it makes me want to cry to, you know?” Pulling back slightly, the woman smiles a smile of truth,”I’ll... We can go see her later on. I’ll introduce you right... She’s a hopeless woman, but she’s nice.”
The smile shines.
“After all... You said she felt like your brother right? If that’s the case... I’m sure it’s not as bad as what my mind twisted it into... Family... Doesn’t get tired of family.”
It’s a statement that should be obvious, something that seems like logic.
Her sister had left her yes... But she had never asked why.
...Because she was afraid of the answer.
If it was what she thought it was, then... Her heart would have broken for real, but never looking because she was afraid, that...
That wasn’t right.
...And she had had to make someone cry to understand that.
...She’d have to make it up to her.
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