Part 2 "First Meeting, To Be Remembered..."
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Juri Arisugawa was alone in the elevator. She was leaning against the side as it moved, her hands clasped behind her back and her eyes closed. This would be trouble, she was sure of it. How long would it be before he challenged her? She had decided to simply leave before exacerbating the situation any further. Thank goodness for Miki, that was all she could say. Touga had been his usual scheming, flattering self - and, just like with any scorpion, you always had to be careful not to get stung. And as for Kyouichi? Well he had just been a blustering squall of male adolescent hormones and preening self-aggrandizement if she'd ever seen one... At times, lets just say, she really, really, really wished Touga Kiryuu would do everyone else a favor and just put out for the boy and put him out of his misery. Not that she couldn't understand why he didn't. Oh Kyouichi was fair to look at for a boy, she was reasonably sure, but, and sexual orientations aside, Kyouichi's personality and his constant whining and moaning would have to make bedding him a chore for just about anyone with less than the patience of a saint! And if Touga were ever to be accused of sainthood, it would have to be by someone exceedingly gullible. So yes, Miki was her saving grace, blessed be his sweet smile, boy prodigy, piano playing heart. If it were just her, Touga Kiryuu, and Kyouichi Saionji in the council... She shivered. [I don't even want to think about it.] She concluded.
The elevator chimed and the doors opened and she stepped out.
"Anthy?" She asked, catching sight of the other girl waiting there on a bench for her. "You're still here? I thought you were going to get some lunch?"
Anthy looked up at her and smiled. She nodded her head slightly once as to agree. "But that's what I did, Miss Juri." She replied, picking up the container of food that had been by her side and getting up to present it to her betrothed. "I brought steamed rice, curry, and shrimp salad... I thought, perhaps you'd like to share?"
She regarded the Rose Bride for a moment. Juri was very tired after the stressful council meeting, and the morning's tension between the two of them was still making her feel raw and uncomfortably exposed to the other girl. She really felt she needed some time to herself to think and... just to let herself feel what she was feeling for a while. Add to that the fact that her temper and restraint had been sorely tested up there with the council... No, she concluded, she really wasn't in a fit state for company at the moment. At least not where Anthy Himemiya was concerned...
Juri sighed and closed her eyes. "I'm sorry, Anthy. Perhaps some other time." She said, and turned to go. Anthy gave no reply and Juri found herself pausing in her steps, considering better of herself for being so brisk to the other girl. "Look, I really am sorry. I'm sure the lunch you made is very good. And it was very thoughtful of you to bring it to me like this... I just... I need to be alone for a little while. Is that alright?"
Anthy nodded. "Of course, Miss Juri. Think nothing of it."
Juri felt like she should say something to that, but for the life of her she couldn't decide what. "Yes. I'll... I'll just see you later then." She spoke rather stiffly. It was a little frustrating, the feeling that certain kind of inability to know what to say evoked in her. And slightly worrisome too, that Anthy could evoke that same exact feeling in her with such startling regularity.
"Until then, Miss Juri." Anthy smiled at her.
Juri spared her another glance, and then nodded and turned and walked away.
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"That's exactly right." Miss Zoe Oyama, Utena's teacher in Speech class, praised. "So, I can count on you then, Miss Tenjou?"
"Alright then." Utena agreed. "I'll do my best."
"And you, Mister Yanowa? I assume we can count on you as well?" Miss Oyama asked hopefully.
"Sure. I don't see why not. The extra credit will be good to have anyway." The student replied
"That's the kind of spirit I like to see from my students." The teacher replied, wishing Jin Yanowa's motivations were a little less selfishly motivated, like Utena Tenjou's seemed to be, but at least she gave him points for being forthright. It was her considered opinion that it was a good trait to have for an orator or a debater. The ability to speak clearly and honestly could take you far. "So, I guess we'll see you tomorrow then. Thank you both again for agreeing."
"No problem." Jin replied, bowing slightly and turning to leave.
"Yeah, I'm sure it'll be fun. I'll see you then, Miss Oyama." Utena bowed as well and offered a smile and a wave as she took her study case and followed her fellow student out of the room, turning the opposite direction. She and Jin Yanowa had been chosen to read their essays out loud in front of the class the next day, as they had both, it seemed, impressed the teacher the most. Speech was a fun class, and all you had to do was talk and write a few essays mostly - a fact which Utena was grateful for as her other classes, excepting gym, were pretty study and work intensive. She smiled to think of the paper in history class that was due in a week though. She always loved studying more when Wakaba was there to cheer her up and help her. Even though, empirically speaking, Wakaba probably wasn't the most helpful sort of study partner you could have. The girl wasn't a genius or anything, and she had a little trouble concentrating sometimes - still, she wouldn't trade her for a brain case like Jin Yanowa for anything!
Utena giggled a little to herself as she walked along the path, thinking of what it would be like if Jin was her study partner instead. She visualized herself getting this blank and far away look on her face as he prattled on about something annoying, then - just as she would be feeling like she could surely take no more and would have to scream and pull her hair out or go mad - then Wakaba would burst in, whack him over the head with her book bag and save her! The image caused her small giggle fit to be more severe.
She looked up at the sky, breathed in, closed her eyes a moment, and exhaled. "Wakaba, you are my hero for sure." She said softly with a smile touching her lips. [Not that I'm going to tell you that.] She considered a caveat. [Your head's big enough already.] She thought it with affection.
A motion caught her attention out of the corner of her eye and she looked over. A few students were heading her way, chatting with one another. Utena shook her head of her silly thoughts and headed off in the direction of the lunch hall across the campus (it was kind of a long walk). Thoughts of the cafeteria though, brought thoughts of that particular scene at breakfast to mind again. Thoughts of the girl in the student council uniform actually - Juri. She felt a bit self conscious about it really, but she'd been thinking about her and Anthy Himemiya off and on all morning. It wasn't exactly the first time she'd wondered about herself honestly, if she were really like Chiaki or Kaori. It was kind of hard to tell before, actually. She thought boys were attractive, in a way, and girls were in a different way. She'd never minded Wakaba talking to her like she did, calling her her boyfriend. She actually kind of liked it truthfully. Not that she wanted to be a boy or anything, she so didn't, despite what a few boys at the school might claim after she beat them at basketball or something. It was just nice, you know? But the thing was, she'd never really had what she'd call a serious crush on someone. She was pretty sure though, that how she was feeling about this girl she'd only even seen across a crowded room would qualify as a crush. A real one. When she thought about her, her chest felt lighter and heavier at the same time in this really funny sort of way, and she had trouble paying attention to things. She found herself trying to remember little details about her. And the thought that she might already be taken was not really that pleasant to think about. She had it bad, she ruefully admitted to herself as she walked.
So absorbed was she in her thoughts though, that she didn't see the signs as she came to the corner of a building and found herself running into another student before she noticed they had appeared from around the corner.
Startled and caught off guard, Utena felt herself losing balance. A flash of orange hair and a hand grabbing hers and steadying her and she found herself looking into startlingly vivid aquamarine eyes.
"Are you alright?" Juri asked.
"Oh, um, yeah." Utena said, getting her balance back fully. "Sorry about that."
"It's alight. I was distracted too... I should apologize to you too." Juri said, looking at the other girl with some curiosity. Utena Tenjou didn't exactly blend in after all. Long pink hair and a customized boy's uniform? Juri mentally found herself helplessly smiling at the cute combination it made.
"Lets just say, it was bad timing then..." Utena said, just a little self-consciously. "You're Juri Arisugawa, right?" She asked, not really a question. "What a coincidence, I was just thinking of you."
"You were thinking... of me?" Juri asked.
"Oh, well yeah. I guess that does sound a little strange, doesn't it?" Utena admitted, backing up just a bit so she wasn't quite so much in the other girl's personal space. Juri let go of her hand as she did. "It was just that I saw you and your friend, Anthy? Arguing at breakfast time this morning. My friends were kind of gossiping, you see."
"Is that so?" The student council member asked, her manner easy if a little guarded. Juri knew that by rights she should be annoyed about the gossip thing. Somehow though, she realized she wasn't.
"Yeah, sorry about that." She paused. "I'm Utena. Utena Tenjou. I'm glad to meet you."
Juri was silent for just a moment. "That's a nice name." She said. "You were... just heading off to lunch I take it?"
"Yeah. I had to stay after class a little while, so I'm a little behind." Utena explained.
"Why did they keep you?" Juri found herself, a little awkwardly, actually striking up a conversation with this girl. It felt kind of odd the way she found herself acting, but she didn't really feel the need to question it.
"Oh, um, Miss Oyama wanted me and another student to read our essays for the class tomorrow. That's all."
"Impressive." Juri smiled kind of charmingly. "What... What was your essay about?" She asked, for some reason wanting to know something more about the girl in front of her.
"Oh, um, Tiananmen Square, actually." Utena confided.
"Really?" Juri smiled. "That's an ambitious topic..." She praised, finding she liked talking with this other girl, just liked the sound of her voice in fact. "A failed revolution. It's kind of ironic in fact." She said wistfully.
[Ironic?] Utena thought. "Actually, that's the interesting thing. The Chinese government is the only one saying it was an attempted revolutionary movement. Apparently, from what I can tell, the protesters were just trying to get the government to change the way they do some things. They weren't trying to overthrow them." Utena explained.
"Really?" Her interest piqued even more. "...I didn't know that, actually." Juri said.
"A lot of people don't." Utena said, studying the other girl's face.
"So, what were these friends of yours saying about me?" Juri asked. "I'm actually kind of curious about it to tell you the truth."
Utena felt her cheeks warming just a little. "Well... My friends, Chiaki and Kaori, they apparently know a lot about you for some reason. There was... They were trying to decide whether you and Anthy Himemiya were having a lover's quarrel, or if you were just roommates."
"What did you decide?" Juri asked.
"The results of the inquiry were inconclusive." Utena told her, a little teasingly.
"Is that so?" Juri laughed. "Then you were probably more accurate than you realized." She admitted, not knowing at all why she was being so completely honest and forthcoming about something she hadn't ever talked about with anyone else.
"So you..."
"It's kind of a... It's complicated." Juri said. "I don't really know how I... How I feel about her."
"How does she feel about you?" Utena asked, her voice soft and caring.
Juri smiled. "I have no idea at all." She admitted with simple honesty, actually feeling the need to blink a little as she felt just the start of the start of unshed tears on the horizon.
"...That's gotta be pretty tough." Utena said, sympathetically. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay. It's just how it is." Juri said simply. "What about you?" Juri asked.
"What about me?" Utena asked.
"Do you have a... Are you seeing anyone?" She asked.
Utena shook her head. "Not really..." She said. "I mean, my friend, Wakaba, she calls me her boyfriend sometimes... but it's really just a joke between us. I don't think she even likes girls that way." Utena confided. She felt the need to be honest about herself too, since Juri had been so much so about herself.
"Do you? Like girls that way?" Juri asked, her gaze soft yet intent and meaningful.
"I... Yeah. Yeah, I really think I do." Utena admitted.
Juri closed her eyes a moment, then opened them. "I thought so." She said simply.
"...You could tell?" Utena asked wonderingly.
Juri nodded, a small smile on her lips. "It's the way you talk. I like it."
Utena laughed a little nervously. "I like the way you talk too." She admitted rather lamely.
Juri gave her a sort of lost and enigmatic sort of smile. "Well, I probably shouldn't keep you any longer, should I? The lunch period's only going to last so much longer after all. I wouldn't want you to go hungry, would I?"
"Oh, right." Utena said, still a little unsteady around the other girl. [Talk about catching me off balance.] Utena said to herself.
"It was nice... running into you, Utena." Juri said.
"You too... Juri." Utena replied, feeling like there was really a moment being shared between them. Juri had called her by just her first name. It was a very familiar form of address, and it made her heart beat faster to think that the other girl considered it apt to address her like that.
Juri smiled, bringing her hand up as if to touch the other girl's face, yet stopping herself before she did. "I like that." She admitted wistfully, moving aside as starting on her way.
"So, I'll maybe see you around sometime, okay?" Utena turned to call to her.
Juri paused. "I'd... I think I'd like that." She said, and turned her head to look back at the other girl for just a moment before going on her way.
Utena stood there a moment, looking after the other girl as she walked away. She brought her right hand up to hold against her heart. She felt it beating fast in her chest, her body felt so different to her now. She didn't know how to explain it, except that she found herself wishing those blue-green eyes would look at her again. Wishing she could just walk beside her for a while. Even if it meant she had to skip lunch all together to do it.
She took a step forwards as if to follow after her and ask Juri if she could do that, but, reluctantly, she thought better of that. Somehow, she just knew she shouldn't push. And really, she didn't know exactly what she would do anyway. She or Juri. Juri was still sort of involved with someone else, wasn't she? It was just her luck though, wasn't it? That she finally found someone she really liked, and they weren't available... Still, Juri had said, she and that other girl weren't really together, were they? No, she'd said it was 'complicated'. And complicated, to her, meant there was room for hope.
Utena turned finally and walked towards the lunch hall again. [I'll just have to keep trying.] She told herself. Determined that she would at least try at it and see what happened. Considering it, she at least wanted to be her friend. [That's what I'll do. I'll try to be her friend.] Utena thought to herself, feeling better about it now. That was the thing to do after all, wasn't it? She realized, more than just the initial pull she'd felt towards the girl she'd glimpsed from afar, she now really just wanted to get to know her too. Wanted to be able to talk with her more, spend time. A lot of time, she lamented to herself. [This is going to be hard, I somehow know it is.]
Still, her feet picked up their pace and she felt a smile cross her face as she hurried along to meet her friends for lunch while she still had time to eat and chat a little perhaps. She wanted to tell someone about this, she realized. She didn't want to keep her feelings inside.
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[Why did I tell her those things?] Juri mentally questioned herself as she walked along the covered path along the side of the school building. [I don't even know her, for goodness sake.] She just couldn't fathom it. But something about Utena Tenjou had just been so disarming to her. It had been so effortless just to talk with her.... She hadn't wanted to stop. And that was kind of scary. She'd wanted to touch her too, in fact. Just some small touch, and it would have been fine.
She stopped, facing the open field of grass in front of her. She placed her hand on the pillar beside her and looked out at the tree before her in the distance. She sighed and her gaze dropped to the grass just before her feet. [It feels like... It feels a little like it did, with Shiori...] She admitted to herself, letting her hand drop from the pillar as she looked forward at the tree and almost unconsciously told her feet to move, told her legs to carry her forward. Her mind was blank and her vision cast downward as she went.
The familiar shade of the tree fell over her and she lowered herself down to the familiar spot. She sat there, arms folded over her knees, back resting against the trunk of the tree. She looked up into the slowly swaying branches and wondered.
...They'd just talked, and not really very well. Juri almost laughed at herself for how the whole little conversation had gone. It was ridiculous really. But she couldn't deny, her heart was beating faster when there'd been no other reason for it to be. Her skin had felt noticeably tingly and sensitized over her hand when she had thought briefly to just touch the other girl's face. When Utena spoke... Juri felt like she could remember every word.
[Is this what it felt like, to fall in love with someone?] She wondered to herself, not having an answer.
A fear clutched her heart at that thought. She moved her hand over the spot where her locket lay beneath her jacked and thought of Shiori Takatsuki, the girl who so often haunted her dreams and her days. Did she still love that girl? She didn't know... She knew her heart still ached to think of her. She could still feel acutely the desire to hold and be held by her - It had never left her.
She sat there a while, her eyes closed, just feeling that feeling. Honestly.
She didn't know what to do with the feeling any more than she usually did, but she couldn't help but need to let herself feel that sometimes. Times like this, when she felt lost or confused, when she so completely didn't know what to do next.
Her feelings were so confused.
Some part of her couldn't help but blame Anthy for that. Always for that. That girl, it had just gotten worse and worse with her... To the point now, that Juri somehow felt that all Anthy would have to do would be to catch her at the right moment and look at her the right way and she would surely come thoroughly undone.
A part of her was frightened, just to think of it. And a part deep inside, that part whispered to her that she wanted it to happen. Wanted that girl to find that one point inside her that would make all of her just come troubling down. It was kind of a fatalistic wish, she realized. But she knew she had it inside her.
She opened her eyes again, and looked out at the world.
'Sing softly the songs of revolution, that our voices may be heard throughout the heavens and the Earth.' The words that Shiori had spoken to her in her dreams echoed again in her mind, she hadn't been able to forget them.
Is that what a revolution was? Letting something crash down around you... and then, what you came out with, it would be something new and different. And... You'd just have to hope, whatever it was that resulted, it would be better than what had come before.
She thought of the upside-down floating castle. The sword Anthy carried within her as if by magic. 'Mysteries, all.' Anthy had called them.
[No more a mystery than you.] Juri spoke in her mind's voice. She wondered briefly, if she herself were a mystery to anyone. If Anthy tried to figure her out just as much as she tried to figure out Anthy, like she tried to figure out so many things about the world and her place in it. Maybe when it came down to it though, Anthy was just a lot better at it than her.
You never really knew. For some reason, Juri thought though, she was glad that Anthy was Anthy and she was who she was.
She sighed and took out the small stash of granola and dried fruit she'd retrieved from her locker shortly after she'd left the council chambers and Anthy behind. She took a bite, closing her eyes in appreciation of the little bit of food.
[Maybe I'm just thinking about things too much.] She considered.
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To be continued...