A Song For Another Time - A Hikaru Hitachiin Story

Chapter Thirty Seven - Something Unpredictable

The most terrifying thing about a nightmare, Rose thinks, is that you can be fully aware it is happening and still completely powerless to stop it. It's not like you can switch channels in the middle of the regularly scheduled programming and hurry the images away with a series of memorized numbers that will take you to a better place. And maybe that was worse than the nightmare itself at this point — that she was completely powerless to stop it. Most of her fears lived in that state these days, it seemed.

In the wake of the tumultuous months of the new year, Rose found herself trapped in the embrace of dark dreams when she wanted nothing more to fall into her bed and float away, just for a little while. Away from the feelings that rooted into the crevices of her skull and refused to dislodge. Away from the constant feeling of being followed. Away from the pitying looks of people who were supposed to believe that she was strong. Instead she was given green eyes and immovable limbs, white rooms and men in suits, and the kind of darkness that sucks you down, down, down until the only thing you know for sure is that you miss the light.

A faint rumbling in her cheek jolted Rose awake and for a brief moment her brain buzzed with thoughts of the probability of an earthquake in Boston before rationality forced her fully awake and she pulled the vibrating cell phone away from her skin, blinking her eyes at the bright screen. Impeccable timing as always, she thinks.

"Hello," she croaked into the receiver, forcing herself upward, phone stuck between her shoulder and head as she rubbed the nightmares away from her eyes.

"Good morning princess~" two voices sang through the speaker and Rose squeezed her eyes tight to prevent herself from rolling them.

"Of all the bad habits Tamaki has, that had to be the one you latched onto," she mumbled, pulling at the corner of her right eye with her forefinger before resting her cheek on her hand and yawning into the phone. The twins had to suppress their laughs because if only she knew about what they did back home. "Is there a reason you're calling at 8 am on a Sunday?"

"Of course," Hikaru responded.

"Do we ever call without a reason?" Kaoru asked only to be answered with a huff followed by a grumble about stupid questions and a threat to end the call right then and there. The twins yelped a few, rushed "don't hang ups" before Kaoru quickly pivoted to the purpose of the call: their upcoming adventure.

In their brief time together, Rose had become all too cognizant of the fact that being a friend of the Hitachiins was more like being a stand-in mother, introducing two obnoxiously curious boys to the ways of the common world — constantly checking in on their well beings and tending to their boredom. They wanted to know everything, do everything, be in the middle of every part of this way of life that was so new and so beyond the comforts that they had grown up in. With the Easter holiday quickly approaching and the weather giving the city the first inklings of a real spring, the twins had begged for hours to dye eggs (" with food coloring in water-filled coffee mugs, like poor American commoners") but their pleas did little but summon prophetic images of dyed tiles, burnt skin and broken eggs in Rose's mind and the idea was quickly scrapped.

Instead, she offered to take them to the regional spring fair — where there would be a much smaller chance that she would return home burned, with both dyed fingers and clothes and bits of hard boiled egg in her hair. It was the kind of affair that passed in her periphery last year while she drowned under assignments. Something she was vaguely aware that other students went to for a much needed break but just didn't have the kind of pull to lure her from the depth of the library and into the sun.

The Boston Spring Faire was one of those fusion festivals that could only happen in America — the kind created by "open," "forward-thinking," middle-class white people who thought they were being inclusive when really they were just being disrespectful. It had a little of everything, in hopes of not overlooking anything. There was egg painting and lily sales. There was seed planting and a May pole, even though it was the beginning of April. There was a tie-dying station and cherry blossom merch (though the only substantial blossoms in the entire city were in the Public Garden and took significant care to keep alive). And to top it all off, the festival was finished with a releasing of paper lanterns "carrying the wishes of fairgoers to the heavens."