for @perfectwill
by @pinlc-candy
Hi, hi! I’m your pitch-hitter! Hope you enjoy! There’s a little bit of angst, but only in a ‘Fukawa’s childhood’ kind of way. Not between these two! I went with childhood friends, part-first date and partners in crime.
***
In fairytales, most little girls were princesses given happily ever afters, who lived in castles with conical roofs and befriended cute fluffy animals. That probably didn’t include stink bugs like the one that followed Touko home one day. Anyway, if they weren’t princesses, they became princesses, and they stayed princesses after the credits rolled.
One such princess was Cinderella. She lived with her stepmother and stepsisters, who abused her, starved her, enslaved her, until one day, Cinderella met Prince Charming and she was liberated from her cruel family and went on to live with her true love. From that day on, Cinderella lived happily with him in a beautiful castle.
Certainly not in a squalid house, like Touko’s. Certainly not with the family she was born into, like Touko.
“Is your neck made of rubber?” hissed Touko’s mother, with one hand gripping her daughter’s shoulder and the other jerking the hairbrush through Touko’s hair. Much like every other time, Touko winced and squeezed her kneecaps tightly as her head tipped in the opposite direction to the brushing.
Her mother glanced at the clock on their living room wall, only to then remember that it ran out of battery power a while ago, so she checked her wristwatch and grimaced, yellow teeth framed by nude, chapped lips.
“They asked us to be there in twenty minutes,” said Touko’s mother, and she gave Touko’s hair another tug. The brush didn’t get very far, and her expression contorted even more. “It takes ten to get to that restaurant from here, so they’ll be arriving in about ten to collect you.”
She took her hand off Touko’s shoulder and shoved Touko’s lower back. Any harder might have sent Touko tumbling to the floor and onto the food wrappers lying there. Instead, Touko just bent forward with a squeak.
“Get up! Get dressed!” demanded her mother, so Touko slid off the stool, feeling its uneven legs make the seat wobble underneath her as her weight shifted.
Keeping her head down, Touko scuttled up the stairs to her bedroom and closed the door behind herself. Her room contained a bed, a wardrobe and a desk. She opened her wardrobe, an old thing that came with the house, and stared at the contents. The back of the wardrobe was splintered from a past impact, and she could count the number of different outfits on one hand. Other girls in her elementary class boasted about new fashions, like how their parents bought them the latest in the Enoshima line, yet Touko had no choice but to pull out her school uniform, with it being the most suitable for the occasion.
As she braided her hair and dressed herself, putting the uniform over her vest and undies, a voice in her head re-emerged, wondering if this was a prank. After all, not many people as young as her, a mere ten years old, could say that they had been invited to lunch by the grandson of the president of Polanski Business Limited, if any could say that at all. She didn’t know anything about him, but her parents had been excited when they read the letter that had been addressed to Touko, marked ‘PRIVATE’, and they had relayed the information to her when she returned home from school that day.
The reason given for the request to see her, according to her parents, was that the grandson was interested in meeting her after reading the book she had published two months ago. To be honest, Touko didn’t feel too keen about the whole thing, imagining the grandson to be at least a decade older than her. Probably some slimeball interested in the female protagonist of her novel, who thought Touko would be similar. He would be someone that she had nothing in common with at all. Just a rich man born into wealth who didn’t know how the real world worked.
However, she couldn’t decline the invitation. Touko hadn’t even accepted it. Her parents did, and without having to ask them, she knew her parents wouldn’t let her opt out of this opportunity. Not if it meant more money for them.
She walked over to her desk and pulled on the drawer. It opened with a grunt. The sight of her stink bug inside of it brought a small smile to her tired face, and she hovered her finger near the insect’s head for a few seconds.
“I’ll see you later, alright?” she whispered. Kameko brushed her antennae against Touko’s finger.
As much as she would prefer to hide herself away, she knew her family would be waiting for her, so she shut the drawer, leaving it ajar, and stepped back. Touko looked down and adjusted her skirt, and only then did she notice a bit of dirt on her pleated skirt. Her stomach tightened. She didn’t know if it was dirt-dirt or a splatter of juice, and she was dabbing it with saliva and picking at the mark when the door flew open.
“There you are!” Touko’s other mother barked in the doorway, not caring that she had nearly startled Touko’s soul out of her body. “The limo will be here any minute. Come on, brat!”
Touko let go of her skirt and shuffled over to the door, barely able to hear her footsteps over the ringing between her ears. Her mother watched her approach without saying anything, and as soon as Touko was close enough, she seized Touko’s wrist and dragged her through the house, with Touko barely managing to keep up, staggering the whole way.
It was this mother that Touko accompanied out of the house and into the garden, where trash collected instead of flowers, sprinkled amongst the dirt patches and overgrown grass. They passed through the tall picket fencing that kept the garden secluded, and then headed down the street.
At this point, Touko’s mother released Touko’s arm, though Touko could still feel the imprints of her mother’s fingers burning against her skin through her sleeve. In contrast, the cool morning air clung to her face.
Neither spoke to the other as they walked. Distant traffic rumbled, and for the most part, she kept her eyes on the pavement. When she did look up, she stiffened, catching sight of her father, who stood at the end of the road with his hands in his suit pockets.
Her footsteps slowed, but not soon enough. The pair stationed themselves by him, with her standing between them.
He turned to them and showed more teeth as his eyes probed Touko. She hugged herself. Prayed her mind exaggerated the actual size of the wet patch on her skirt.
Finally, he looked away, but her guard stayed up.
“Don’t screw this up for us, Touko-chan,” he said in his gravelly voice.
Touko nodded. His eyes flitted back to her and flashed warningly.
“Speak when you’re spoken to,” he snarled.
She twitched like someone thwacked a ruler against the back of her hand.
“Y-Yes, Father!” she promised. He stared for a few more seconds before taking his eyes off her, but her skin continued to tingle as they waited in silence.
A minute later, a black speck appeared in the distance, and Touko’s father straightened his back and fiddled with his tie. Her mother tweaked the u-neckline of her dress, while Touko clasped her hands together, feeling her heart beat faster. As the speck drew closer, it began to shape, revealing itself to be a limo.
The windows, tinted black, disallowed anyone on the outside from seeing into the vehicle. Touko felt rather small when it pulled up in front of them. She had never seen a limo before, and though she knew they were big, she didn’t realise they were this long. Shortly after it came to a stop, the driver’s window yawned open, and they saw the chauffeur, an old man wearing a suit and a cap.
Touko didn’t notice the man make eye contact with any of them or even look at them, but he glanced at what seemed to be a photograph held in his gloved hand and gave a slight nod.
“We’ll have her back in a few hours,” he said.
Then he got out, walked alongside the limo and opened another door. He stood there, and not until Touko felt one of her mothers push her on the back did she realise that she was meant to get in. She hurried over, hesitated at the door, then ducked in.
Once Touko sat down on one of the plush leather seats, the chauffeur shut the door with a thud. Touko peeked out of the window, and though she could still see the faces of her parents, tinted black, none of them should have been able to see her.
Yet she felt their gazes on her.
Touko swallowed her heart back down. Her body thrummed. The limo started moving, and the faces of her parents began to recede. Even after the limo turned the corner and entered another street, she still felt their gazes on her, tied around her limbs with string.
Another man in a suit sat along from her on the row of seats. He didn’t talk to her, and she didn’t talk to him. His sunglasses were a double-edged sword. On one hand, she rather he didn’t stare at her, but though she couldn’t see his eyes fixed on her, she couldn’t tell for sure if he was secretly studying her or not.
She wiggled uncomfortably, but soon stopped, cringing as her seat squeaked with her movements. Staying as still as possible now, she peered upward. Above her loomed a dark ceiling dotted with small lights that reminded her of stars, and opposite her was a mini-bar with drinks she wasn’t old enough to consume legally.
Regardless of whether she could have any or not, she didn’t try. Didn’t want to. It tasted disgusting, anyway.
Roughly ten minutes later, they parked outside of a restaurant that Touko didn’t recognise outside of her parents chattering about it being mentioned in her letter that she never got to read. The chauffeur opened her door, and she hopped out. He turned away and walked toward the building. She followed.
Despite the fanciness of the place, no other vehicles were stationed in the carpark, and while she hadn’t been to a restaurant before, she knew this one was fancy. Speckled square panels intermingled with straight-edged windows on the building’s face, all very modern, and a scarlet brick floor surrounded the entrance. They passed under a canopy, silver font on a golden background, and the door opened automatically to permit them inside, like it deemed them worthy.
Inside was just as empty with only one table occupied, and even then, only by one person. Two, if one included the elderly man stood next to the seated boy.
Cream walls and crimson tiled flooring caged Touko in. Polished wooden furniture filled the open room, their accents the colour of standard rose petals. Everything that bled into her vision gave the restaurant warm hues, and it bathed Touko’s small body in it too. Touko trailed after the chauffeur, who seemed to be leading her toward the table with the boy, and she tried to figure out who they were before they reached there. Her first thought was that the elderly man was the boy’s grandfather and the president’s son, and the boy was the president’s great-grandson.
When they arrived at the table, Touko noticed no plates or cutlery had been set. The only things on the tablecloth, which resembled a blood splatter, were a paper folder and a book with a blank cover, all positioned where the boy sat.
She felt a bit queasy. Red. This place had a lot of red. Sometimes she visited decorator shops and browsed the paint aisles, taking card samples home with her so she could continue to examine the different shades in her bedroom. Not because she wanted to paint her room or anything, but to give names to the exact colours she imagined while scratching ink into her notebook.
“You can wait outside now,” said the boy, and the chauffeur left. Once he departed from the room, going back the way he came, the boy steepled his fingers and focused on Touko. His eyes pricked her and she wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a chill.
The boy looked about her age, but with a stern expression too hard for most children to be able to have. But she knew it possible because adults occasionally asked her if she was okay upon seeing those features clouding her face. Yet, his weren’t a fog like hers, but a lightning strike as clear as day. Blond hair framed his face, reaching his shoulders, and his bright blue eyes studied her from behind white glasses. While her frames were circular, his were rectangular, and he nudged up his glasses before lowering his hand back down.
“Touko Fukawa,” he said. No matter how seriously he spoke, he couldn’t hide that his voice hadn’t broken yet. He picked up the paper folder that had been resting by his elbow and opened it, then took out the contents and set the folder down again.
She eyed the stack of papers fastened together with a foldback clip. Their angle didn’t allow her to read what they said. The boy pinched the clip, released a single sheet of paper, and then let go of it so it snapped back into place.
“Let’s get straight to business, shall we?” he asked. He put down the majority of the papers and nodded at the chair opposite him.
Her legs didn’t budge. Only her arm moved, and even then, it didn’t feel like she was moving it herself.
“B-Business?” she said, hovering a crooked finger by her lips.
The boy inclined his head forward a little. “Yes. Is there some issue with that?”
He didn’t relent. Touko squirmed against his glare and shrunk back.
“I thought... Aren’t I meeting the grandson of the president of Polanski Business Limited?” she asked in a small voice.
“What? Yes.” Annoyance flickered on his face like the flame of a candle shimmering. It may as well have been a full-blown fire with how she jolted. He hadn’t even raised his voice. “I’m his grandson, Byakuya Polanski... but that will be Byakuya Togami in a few years, when I take over the Togami Conglomerate.”
She blinked. “Eh?”
Byakuya pursed his lips. Just like that, he went from hot to cold.
“You’ve wasted enough time,” he told her icily. “Sit down and then we’ll get to work.”
The table was flanked by four chairs, one of which he had already claimed. Touko shot a quick look at the old man, who stood motionless, staring into space like he was somewhere else entirely. He must have been Byakuya’s butler. She averted her gaze and lugged her chair back enough for her to sit on it, shuddering as it gave an awful screech.
After she sat down, Byakuya started talking again.
“Your debut novel isn’t the sort of thing I’d usually read,” he said, “but I read about it in the news. It’s the talk of the nation. It’s impossible for me to avoid hearing about it.”
Her toes curled in her shoes. The puzzle pieces in her head began to fit together. Everything so far pointed toward Byakuya being a reluctant fan of her book, who as the grandson of an incredibly wealthy man, could afford to hire out a whole restaurant and request her presence. But also, she noted, they were of similar ages, and they were at a table in a restaurant together. Privately. And surely Byakuya would want to marry someone one day. Perhaps someone famous. Or someone who would become famous.
So all this... could it have been...?
“After a week, I decided to read your book,” he said, looking her in the eyes and leaning in a bit, “and...”
... and here, the lights could have dimmed, maturing the colours in the room to sombre shades. The butler could have whipped out a candle and placed it between them, lighting it in the bat of an eye. A violin would start singing, and Byakuya would scoop Touko’s hands up in his, and he would say suavely,
... I want to know if you will be betrothed to me?
“Y-Yes!” she gasped, clutching her heart.
Opposite her, with his hands firmly on his side of the table, Byakuya quirked his brow and said, “What?”
Touko returned to reality with a crash and cringed. “I-I...”
“You didn’t even hear what I had to say yet,” he said as his lips curled into a sneer.
She willed the floor to swallow her up, chair and all, but it didn’t, and because she still continued to exist, he elaborated.
“After reading your book, I realised you have great potential,” he told her, and he didn’t laugh or even smirk. “Your prose captured many people’s attention. It made them want to date a person like the one your main character dated by the end. I hate romance novels, but even yours drew out an emotion from me... an unpleasant one, but one nonetheless.”
His face gave a quiver before grimly setting. In the beats during their conversation, when neither talked, her whirling thoughts made the silence loud. She swallowed, finding that her mouth and throat had become dry, but she didn’t want to ask for water. Well, she did want some, if only to give her something to do while she sat there, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask or even find the words. They evaporated off her tongue.
“You’re a genius, like me,” he said in a low, even tone, and he tucked a hand under his chin. He looked at her as much as she looked at him. “Even if you’re sitting there with a stupid face like that.”
Touko flinched and jerked a hand to her cheek.
“W-Who are you calling a stupid face...?” she asked, anger spiking in her chest. Hitching in her voice like nails down a chalkboard.
Byakuya was unperturbed.
“I have a proposal,” he said casually.
That made her waver. The ball of anger in her swooped down and rolled off somewhere, leaving a flutter in its place.
“P-Proposal?” she mumbled.
When he reached into his jacket pocket, her stomach flipped, and she imagined him whisking out a small box that clicked open to reveal a ring. Never mind that neither were old enough. That didn’t matter in the world of imagination. Her imagination.
As it was, moments later, he held out a small notebook and passed it to her. She took it and opened it. The first page was blank, and leafing through the rest, so were those.
“I want you to work for me,” he said while her eyes were downcast. “I have great plans in store for the world, and I want you to assist me.”
Want. Byakuya wanted her. The word ensnared her, and Touko barely breathed as she curled her fingers over her heart.
“I read your manuscripts,” he started, only to stop when she jumped in her seat. Her eyes darted upward and locked onto him.
“W-What?” she asked.
Touko didn’t give him any manuscripts. He offered Touko the stack of papers that he had got out the folder earlier, and she brought them closer to her face.
Reading the first line, her breath lodged in her throat with a choked yelp.
This was hers. Definitely hers. She recognised the handwriting, remembered writing it, and she held the papers, trembling. Trembling because she had kept this in a shoebox under her bed. And as she flipped through the other pages, she found more of her work. Work that she hadn’t let her parents take. Or read.
Horror clung to the back of her throat with its claws digging in, and the bitter, acidic ooze it secreted trickled all the way down to the pit of her stomach.
“What’s the matter with you now, for goodness sake?” asked Byakuya, somewhere in the fog consuming her thoughts.
“How... How did you get these?” she said, staring at her manuscripts.
“Your parents sent them to me,” he explained, confirming her suspicions. She tore her gaze off the paper, breathing shallowly. While she was teetering on falling apart, he didn’t so much as rattle. “You are incredibly talented, and trust me, if you weren’t, I wouldn’t bother. I assumed I would get more romance handed to me, but to my pleasant surprise, it wasn’t all that. One piece stood out to me... the one that referenced a shadow observing a young girl being abused. It seemed biographical. Was it?”
Touko knew which one he meant. And it was. She nodded.
If her parents had read it, she didn’t know if they would have included it. Maybe they hadn’t bothered reading it. They never read the novel she published. Or perhaps they had read it, but they didn’t think there was anything incriminating in it. In their heads, they were justified.
She wondered if they really were justified, if she was as rotten a girl as they and the rest of the world had told her she was for so long.
“I want you to work for me, Touko Fukawa,” murmured Byakuya. Light glinted off his glasses. “I have plans for the world, and you would be a great asset.”
It wasn’t with disgust he stared at her with, like her mothers. It wasn’t lust he stared at her with, like her father. It was something else, a light in his eyes, embedded in an otherwise blank mask. Touko didn’t answer right away, trying to locate a crack in what he said, one that would reveal his true motives.
No one ever wanted her because of her talent. People wanted her for a punching bag, as a pastime, as a target or more recently, for her newfound fame or for her money, which all went to her parents. No one wanted her because of her talent. Not really. Not until now.
“You... want to publish my books?” she asked, croaking slightly. She shook her head. “I already have a publisher...”
Byakuya waved a hand. “No, no. I told you, I have plans for this world. Don’t you think it’s corrupt, Fukawa?”
She pressed her thighs together and hunched her shoulders, unable to disagree. He tilted his head to one side.
“There are things that I’ve seen, that I’ve been through, that most people wouldn’t be able to even imagine,” he said, a child. Touko stared back at him. Thought she understood the reflections in his eyes. “Terrible... depraved acts. Violence. Betrayals.”
“Try me,” she blurted, a child too.
That made him hesitate. His mask slipped, and he showed genuine surprise. Not at what she said, but at how she addressed him. Next to him, for the first time so far, his butler stirred, and he seemed to inflate, growing in size, fists clenching by his sides.
Her stomach knotted.
“S-Sorry!” she said, smacking her hands together in prayer. “Please... Please don’t hit me...”
Seconds passed, filling her head with the wail of a siren. Byakuya blinked, then regained his composure.
“I don’t intend to,” he said calmly. He adjusted his glasses. “But you see the world for what it is, don’t you? It’s truly rotten. There are people high up who misuse their power, who don’t deserve it. Society has been poisoned, and I want to rebuild it. But to do that, we need to cut the strings of the puppeteers, and flush out all the impurities that are rife in civilisation.”
This didn’t sound like something that would come out of a child, but it did. His butler had returned to being stoic. She gripped her skirt. Slits of her knuckles blanched.
Byakuya offered his hand to her.
“I want you to be my publicist,” he said. “I want you to write for me.”
Touko bit her lip, sinking back in her seat. She eyed his hand like a snake was wound around his arm under his sleeve.
“M-My stories...” Touko mumbled. Her paper refuge. Their walls threatened to collapse in on her.
“You can still write your novels,” he said. “In fact, I demand you do. But I will also want you to come with me. Over the coming years and perhaps even beyond, we will be working closely together toward that ideal world. One without people like the villains in your stories.”
She sat up. Was about to take his hand.
“... but be warned. Once you accept this deal, you cannot go back on your word. Your life will be as good as over if you do,” he said. “But as long as you stay by my side, I will stay by yours.”
Her body tensed. She faltered, but their eyes met and with a surge of determination, she took his hand and shook it. Byakuya tried and failed to fight down a smile, a fleeting crescent that soon hid behind a cloud in the night sky, but even after his features hardened, she pressed the image against her heart. He had looked so beautiful.
Still did.
“Excellent. Pennyworth, fetch us the menus,” Byakuya said, and the butler marched away.
While the butler was busy, Byakuya reached into his pocket, pulled out a pen, and gave it to her.
“Take notes,” he said. She positioned the pen against the first page in the notebook, and he added, “We can eat afterwards. Don’t worry, I will pay for both of us. Now, there’s an academy that enrolls the country’s most gifted high school students every year. This would be the ideal place for the movement I have in mind. I was thinking, to appeal to more people, we could have a mascot of sorts.”
As he spoke, Touko wrote down what he said, and whenever he paused, she sketched bits onto a doodle in the margin.
It resembled a bear.
