Tweak

InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Baby got back!"

Username: 
Password:    
Remember Me
  • Create Account
  • IJ Login
  • OpenID Login
Search by : 
  • View
    • Create Account
    • IJ Login
    • OpenID Login
  • Journal
    • Post
    • Edit Entries
    • Customize Journal
    • Comment Settings
    • Recent Comments
    • Manage Tags
  • Account
    • Manage Account
    • Viewing Options
    • Manage Profile
    • Manage Notifications
    • Manage Pictures
    • Manage Schools
    • Account Status
  • Friends
    • Edit Friends
    • Edit Custom Groups
    • Friends Filter
    • Nudge Friends
    • Invite
    • Create RSS Feed
  • Asylums
    • Post
    • Asylum Invitations
    • Manage Asylums
    • Create Asylum
  • Site
    • Support
    • Upgrade Account
    • FAQs
    • Search By Location
    • Search By Interest
    • Search Randomly

kondo kozue | 近藤 梢 ([info]anthesphoria) wrote in [info]disappear_rpg,
@ 2010-03-04 18:43:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:beachthread, kiriko, kozue

you can't beat my midget rage
WHO: Kozue and Kiriko
WHAT: A specific complaint.
WHERE: Their room at the beach.
WHEN: Shortly after this disaster. Evening.
WHY: Kozue is full of performative anger and really just needs someone to talk to.


By the time Kozue had made her way down the hallway—a long distance, for Kou's room was at the other end of the building—confused shock had given way to a livid anger. She threw the door open, came in in a whirl of blonde curls flipping this way and that behind her, and slammed the door with a surprising amount of force. Especially from Kozue. Tiny, peaceful, giggling Kozue. She couldn't figure out exactly where this fury had come from, or why it was so suddenly bubbling up uncontrollably from her chest. It felt as though it came from there, or maybe from the back of her throat or her cheeks which felt hot enough to be burning bright red. She didn't look up to see if Kiriko was in the room. (It would have been more embarrassing to know, either way, than to not even think about the possibility.)

She crossed the room to her bed and grabbed the pillow from the head of it with far more force than the poor feather pillow deserved. It had been soft to sleep on—loyal and effective, and had never hurt anybody. It certainly didn't deserve to be winged across the room at the now-closed door.

It, however, got exactly that treatment, as Kozue let it fly with what she had hoped and intended to be a scream filled with anger and completely justified hurt and insult and pain. It was, instead, half a scream and half a wail, as somewhere in the middle of the motion she ran out of anger and was left with self-pity and disgust and a tangled mess of ugly emotions she could not name. That was it, it seemed, for she flopped down onto her bed with a second, quiet noise, not quite a sob. She had no idea why she was so furious—she had not even wanted it that badly. Kou clearly hadn't any interest in her, and he was definitely a virgin and awkward besides, so it probably would have been awful. Definitely would have been awful. So why did it matter so much? It simply made no sense. She stared at her hands for a few moments, and only then took the chance of looking up to see if her best friend had actually seen that awful display.

She saw feathers, first, as the loyal and long-serving pillow had split open at the seams when it hit the wooden doorframe, and there was now a cloud of goosedown feathers slowly fluttering to the ground. But Kiriko, was Kiriko…


(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]apathyisboring
2010-03-05 12:16 am UTC (link)
From behind the shower of goose down, Kiriko didn't look quite as shocked as she should, though only because she'd finally thought to shut her mouth from the hanging "o" shape it had assumed throughout Kozue's production. As it faded the surprise was replaced instead by a different unreadable mix of emotions, as if she hadn't quite worked out what she ought to be feeling or what she ought to be showing.

And of course, she hadn't. This was not the kind of situation she generally expected to deal with on the way down to dinner. Or at all, really. Kozue's angry footsteps had come from up the hall. Kou's room? What had happened? Some part of her suggested a breakup but that seemed naive. Kozue had never been so upset by something like that before. All the same, if it was Kou... she couldn't help feeling a bit responsible and hoped to God it wasn't showing on her face.

Slowly, awkwardly, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and approached her friend. She turned the chair from the dressing table towards the bed and sat, leaning in, inclining her head at the angle she'd learned was caring without being intrusive. Looking as she was supposed to would help, right?

"What happened?"

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]anthesphoria
2010-03-05 12:30 am UTC (link)
"It's stupid," was Kozue's first response, slightly sullen, self-conscious, and more than a bit choked up. It was stupid, stupid, stupid to cry, of all things. (And now she sounded a bit like Akuba-senpai and that worried her, but only off in a distant part of her mind that had detached from her ridiculous carrying-on.)

Then she looked up, with a sigh, to give Kiriko a short, but rather searching look; Kiriko deserved a better answer, Kozue decided. For the moment, in fact for months now, she had forgotten Kiriko's role in starting the relationship that was now prompting her to destroy other people's household linens. (The feathers were just now settling, though some of them had been stirred to another round of fluttering by the motion of the dressing chair.) "I... Oubai doesn't care about me. In the slightest. Not even remotely. Not even—" her voice trembled as the simple answer started to become a tirade, and she swallowed, trying to get her control back. Took a deep breath, and another one, and prayed to god (or God or her persona or whoever would give a crap and listen) that she wasn't going to start crying.

The breath helped, and she was able to get out the actual explanation, not the emotional tangle. "I just threw myself at Kou and he couldn't have cared less."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]apathyisboring
2010-03-05 12:37 am UTC (link)
Her eyebrows wrinkled, lifted, folded into a new frowning pattern and eventually settled on a look she hoped was sympathetic. It was not exactly something that Kiriko had experience with - she had always been on the opposite side of the rejection equation. That wasn't the really puzzling part, however - why on earth did Kozue care so much about what Kou, of all people, wanted? Wasn't this the kind of thing she could normally just move on from?

She inched her chair a little closer and leaned over to pluck a few feathers out of her friend's hair.

"Do you... really like him?"

She'd been wondering how to ask, and the question seemed more relevant now than ever.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]anthesphoria
2010-03-05 12:44 am UTC (link)
In some part, it was just that Kozue was also unaccustomed to rejection from this side and had never known precisely how much it stung. (To be fair, her brand of heartbreak was much more angled towards acceptance followed by quick dumping than preemptive rejection, but she figured the pain might have been similar.)

"Ng… No," she admitted, with a sniffle, "Not especially, but… It's so stupid that it matters to me what he thinks. I should just…"

But she found herself unable to say it. I should just resign myself to this and take the presents and the free gourmet meals and the prestige and not care about the rest of it. Or, I should just be able to go somewhere else for the other things I want. Because that was what was going to happen down the road, two or three years or five years or however long from now it happened. Instead, she tried awkwardly to explain, "I shouldn't care this much that one person doesn't think I'm pretty." (Her mind supplied, there, a list of other, far weightier adjectives in place of pretty, but Kozue bit her tongue and held them in.) "Especially one person I don't like any more than anybody else I've screwed for the hell of it."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]apathyisboring
2010-03-05 12:59 am UTC (link)
"Wait, what? He doesn't think you're pretty?"

That couldn't be right, could it? She thought back to what she'd seen of them, what she knew of them... Kou hadn't wanted to sleep with her was one piece of the puzzle. For the rest, her mind stuck on Keiichi's dungeon. Hadn't he liked her better with normal hair? Maybe it was all because she was half? If Kou had said something like that to her, the whole episode made a great deal more sense.

"If he doesn't, that's his problem," she said firmly, feeling her confidence returning armed with this new-and-plausible theory that this was a race thing. "Everyone thinks you're pretty. Even Shirai thinks you're pretty." She brushed aside her irritation at that and continued.

"And you're right, why should you care about what he thinks? He's just stuffy and old-fashioned and boring. Doesn't seem much better than dealing with your grandmother, if you ask me."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]anthesphoria
2010-03-05 01:06 am UTC (link)
Bruised ego soothed slightly by Kiriko's reassurance (and if Shirai who hated everything thought that she was pretty, and she reminded herself that he did, at least enough to waste oodles of money on her just to show her off all over town or... whatever he had been on about), Kozue looked up at her friend. "That's sort of part of the problem. My grandmother thinks he's great."

And somewhere in Kozue's head, the equation had been performed; if Kou, who her grandmother liked, felt this way about her, whoever she ended up married to would feel this way, too.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]apathyisboring
2010-03-05 01:18 am UTC (link)
Figured that her grandmother would think he was great. Hadn't that been part of her pitch, way back when? Part of her wondered if she hadn't thought this one all the way through and the rest of her was angrily blaming Kou for making this forty times more complicated than it needed to be.

"So find another boring guy she'll like to date, but pick one with a sex drive."

She smiled minutely, but it flickered as she leaned forward, placing her forearms on her knees.

"What'll she say if you break it off?"

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]anthesphoria
2010-03-05 02:05 am UTC (link)
"I don't know if she'd be angrier to find out that I ended it or that he did." She bit her lip, thinking, and absently reached up to rub at her face. "I... think, probably, she'd be on my side if he broke it off. But that's just a guess. It might go bad either way." She laughed, with a brief, bitter undertone that was a bit uncharacteristic of normal Kozue, and shook her head. "I guess that's not the worst plan. There've got to be more normal guys out there who still have prestigious families and make her happy."

She followed that statement with another short laugh, much the same as the first: "Maybe she just senses guys who'd make me unhappy and zooms in on them."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]apathyisboring
2010-03-05 06:56 am UTC (link)
"You can find one you like who is a really good actor?" She smiled along with the suggestion. Kozue seemed better now. Not alright, but better. The remaining pillows were probably safe, but this kind of fragile and tentative okay-ness still made her a bit cautious if only because she couldn't tell if it was time to suggest ice cream or not.

She stood from the dressing room chair only to sit on the edge of the bed instead, leaning down and propping her chin up on the heels of her palms.

"Your grandmother couldn't have expected it to last forever. And it isn't like you didn't try."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]anthesphoria
2010-03-08 05:21 pm UTC (link)
Kozue nodded, and sniffled slightly; she had not really cried, but aborted tears left her a bit sniffly and red-faced nonetheless. The sniffle had been intended as a laugh, but had gotten lost somewhere along the way from intention to execution. "I don't know what she expected, really, but I can't believe Oubai's father had the nerve to…" She shook her head; thinking about that would only make her angrier.

She would much prefer the option that involved speculating on important talents for The Next Boyfriend. "Now she's got it into her head that I'm dating and I'm going to have to try double hard to keep her out of the loop. Maybe I can just keep telling her I'm seeing Oubai." Provided that the senior Oubai didn't screw that up, too, once they were finished. When Kozue figured out how best to end it in a way that would keep Kou or his family from communicating with her family.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


(Read comments) -


Home | Site Map | Manage Account | TOS | Privacy | Support | FAQs