My Little Captor Can't Be This Cute
Dec 5, 2015 21:32:52 GMT -5
Shun Minamoto and Hazuki Tsukimiya like this
Post by Shinpei Minamoto on Dec 5, 2015 21:32:52 GMT -5
Shinpei was holding an under-ripe banana in his hand, the fruit firm and green-tinged. It was a bunch, actually: 6 of them, about a pound and a half. Produce number 4011.
Why?
Well, he had to eat, of course. So he'd gone to the grocery store to pick up some food, and this banana was part of it.
Why?
Well, he liked smoothies (an excellent Human World invention, almost worth getting kicked out of the Soul Society) and everyone knows bananas are the key to a good smoothie. Actually, not everyone knows this fact, but Shinpei sure did. Something he'd learned in passing from one of his nighttime visitors. Serena? Makiko? Karen? He thought maybe it was Karen. He wasn't so good with names: his interactions with women were naturally transient, short, ephemeral. In the morning he was left with memories, often sweet, and a lingering impression of his partner(s) that slowly faded. He could easily remember faces (a loose freckle here, a slightly misshapen nose, a lock of hair that kept falling forward), voices (a little lilt, an odd accent, a hesitation before a word or two) and of course the rest (a breathy gasp, a slight twitch, flushed skin). But in the end these were impermanent factors: they tended to blend into each other. Was Serena the one whose lips had become so strawberry-pink? If hers had, she wasn't the only one. Surely he could pick a single woman from the Human World whose lips had been the sweetest, but he tended not to. These sorts of things didn't concern him; after all, do you remember the yellowest, sweetest banana you've ever eaten?
He could be cruel, sometimes, without intending to be.
But this was his day-to-day kind of reality. I certainly don't mean to give you a false impression of his life and make you think it was all song and dance. I'm sure if you were going to write a biography, you wouldn't say much about how often your subject woke up in the middle of the night, walked around, drank a glass of water, peed, flopped back into bed, and then fell back asleep. I'm sure you wouldn't bother saying much about how your subject hesitated before choosing the slightly less expensive shampoo over the slightly higher quality brand, or if he usually ate a Red Delicious apple but decided to try out a Fuji that day.
And sure, Shinpei did everything with just a little bit of panache. It was the sort of thing that became self-reinforcing: you see a self-assured, perpetually grinning, flowery kimono-wearing young man and I'm sure you think (or would) "my my, what a cad." Or something to that effect. Of course, he was a cad, but that's not my point. I guess he kind of looked and seemed a little like a caricature, though I'm sure if you confronted him about it he'd smirk and say that they were copying him. "I was the original Genji." Never mind that the book was written far before he was dead. Er, "alive."
For all the posturing and the philandering, his life was full of the ordinary, just like everyone else's, and so the difference only really came up in between one normal thing and the next. So normally I wouldn't even bother this moment besides just to characterize him, I suppose, although I certainly hope I'm not making you empathize with him too much. I keep my promises, but I don't think I ever promised to be sympathetic.
I go off on tangents so frequently. It's a bad habit. Where were we?
Here he was: shining like a Shinigami beacon, long ago having abandoned the idea of concealing his presence from man, Shinigami or Hollow. He stood tall and relaxed, his eyes idly drifting over the flowing stream of shoppers that dripped past him as he stood by the fruit stands. He stuck out like a sore thumb: pink, flower-patterned robes (more open than was socially appropriate, perhaps) and maybe a Katana hilt poked out from the cloth every now and then. He paid it no mind: it was a perfectly fine day and in many ways his nerves were dulling here on Earth.
What, after all, did he have to be afraid of?
Why?
Well, he had to eat, of course. So he'd gone to the grocery store to pick up some food, and this banana was part of it.
Why?
Well, he liked smoothies (an excellent Human World invention, almost worth getting kicked out of the Soul Society) and everyone knows bananas are the key to a good smoothie. Actually, not everyone knows this fact, but Shinpei sure did. Something he'd learned in passing from one of his nighttime visitors. Serena? Makiko? Karen? He thought maybe it was Karen. He wasn't so good with names: his interactions with women were naturally transient, short, ephemeral. In the morning he was left with memories, often sweet, and a lingering impression of his partner(s) that slowly faded. He could easily remember faces (a loose freckle here, a slightly misshapen nose, a lock of hair that kept falling forward), voices (a little lilt, an odd accent, a hesitation before a word or two) and of course the rest (a breathy gasp, a slight twitch, flushed skin). But in the end these were impermanent factors: they tended to blend into each other. Was Serena the one whose lips had become so strawberry-pink? If hers had, she wasn't the only one. Surely he could pick a single woman from the Human World whose lips had been the sweetest, but he tended not to. These sorts of things didn't concern him; after all, do you remember the yellowest, sweetest banana you've ever eaten?
He could be cruel, sometimes, without intending to be.
But this was his day-to-day kind of reality. I certainly don't mean to give you a false impression of his life and make you think it was all song and dance. I'm sure if you were going to write a biography, you wouldn't say much about how often your subject woke up in the middle of the night, walked around, drank a glass of water, peed, flopped back into bed, and then fell back asleep. I'm sure you wouldn't bother saying much about how your subject hesitated before choosing the slightly less expensive shampoo over the slightly higher quality brand, or if he usually ate a Red Delicious apple but decided to try out a Fuji that day.
And sure, Shinpei did everything with just a little bit of panache. It was the sort of thing that became self-reinforcing: you see a self-assured, perpetually grinning, flowery kimono-wearing young man and I'm sure you think (or would) "my my, what a cad." Or something to that effect. Of course, he was a cad, but that's not my point. I guess he kind of looked and seemed a little like a caricature, though I'm sure if you confronted him about it he'd smirk and say that they were copying him. "I was the original Genji." Never mind that the book was written far before he was dead. Er, "alive."
For all the posturing and the philandering, his life was full of the ordinary, just like everyone else's, and so the difference only really came up in between one normal thing and the next. So normally I wouldn't even bother this moment besides just to characterize him, I suppose, although I certainly hope I'm not making you empathize with him too much. I keep my promises, but I don't think I ever promised to be sympathetic.
I go off on tangents so frequently. It's a bad habit. Where were we?
Here he was: shining like a Shinigami beacon, long ago having abandoned the idea of concealing his presence from man, Shinigami or Hollow. He stood tall and relaxed, his eyes idly drifting over the flowing stream of shoppers that dripped past him as he stood by the fruit stands. He stuck out like a sore thumb: pink, flower-patterned robes (more open than was socially appropriate, perhaps) and maybe a Katana hilt poked out from the cloth every now and then. He paid it no mind: it was a perfectly fine day and in many ways his nerves were dulling here on Earth.
What, after all, did he have to be afraid of?