The Newest Fic
Feb. 6th, 2006 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76I kind of want to title this "Doll versus Doll," but that sounds too much like a doujinshi title and not really like this story at all. So, anyway, it's set in my Tales from a Ramen Stall universe, and thus far has post-X Subaru, Ayatsuri Sakon, and Rozen Maiden in it. I'm going to try very hard not to have Yami no Matsuei in it, because that would almost certainly involve Muraki, who gives me hives. Um, spoilers for the second season of Rozen Maiden ("Traumend"), so if you haven't seen that yet and don't want spoilers, go watch that first.
The room had been kept locked for the last two weeks. Before that there were reports of strange telekinetic activities, dishes and vases and flowers suddenly flinging themselves at the occupants and whatever nurses or visitors happened to be nearby. At first the hospital administration had put the incidents down to accidents or overactive imaginations. Since the event that had admitted two of their best long-term care nurses to the hospital’s own emergency room, however, they’d changed their minds and called in a professional.
Sumeragi Subaru read over the faxed report with his mismatched eyes and stifled a vague feeling of dislike. He’d never really liked cases that happened in hospitals. Too many bad memories. But he was a pro by any benchmark—these days—and so flipped to the second page with a small sigh. The administrators of the Sumeragi estate in Kyoto tried to get as much information pertaining to each case as possible. This time, they’d included complete incident reports for each attack as well as a detailed history on the last patient in the room before the troubles began, a girl who had died of a long illness.
When he’d finished going through the entire stack of papers, Subaru set them down and attempted to discern what about the case was niggling at his mind. Finally, through deduction, he realized what it was and picked up the sheaf again, leafing through to the most recent, most violent attack.
“Black feathers...?” he murmured aloud.
*
Nakamichi Takashi nervously patted his pocket yet again, making sure the key was still there, as he paced beside the long-legged onmyouji whom the Sumeragi had sent over to take care of the hospital’s little problem. He personally would have been happy to leave the room locked and unused, but the scared nurses had petitioned over his head and gotten the board to call in a witch-doctor. At an exorbitant price, he mentally added. Well, if the incidents didn’t stop, they’d better not blame him if they couldn’t get their money back. He’d been against this whole idea since the beginning.
The onmyouji looked at him with those weird mismatched eyes (white and green... who had white and green eyes? had to be contacts) and said quietly, “May I ask your opinion on the matter, Nakamichi-san?” Somehow his voice was older and deeper than one would’ve thought for someone so young and skinny.
Takashi snorted. “To be honest? I’m not convinced it’s real.”
“Those nurses injured themselves?”
“People do crazy things when they’ve been on the job sometimes.” That was a fact. “Nursing is a stressful profession, and hospital shifts can be very long.” They reached the correct hallway, lights slightly dimmer than they used to be due to new energy-saving measures. Takashi turned right, taking the corner fast to force the onmyouji into a few extra steps to keep up. “You think differently?”
The man gave a half-smile, inoffensive. “Most likely it’s the spirit of the girl who died in that room,” he explained, as though to a fool. “There are other possibilities, however.”
“As long as you get rid of it,” Takashi grumbled. “That’s what we’re paying you for, after all.”
*
After the hospital administrator had unlocked the room for him and disappeared, the sweat on his brow belying his disbelief, Subaru cautiously pushed the door open. In the moonlight it looked like any other hospital room, empty and unremarkable. The weight of the ofuda in his coat pockets swung comfortingly against Subaru’s legs as he stepped into the room and shut the door behind himself. He didn’t bother to turn the lights on, letting his eyes adjust to the shadows. The white curtains wavered, ghostlike, in the breeze.
Subaru’s eyes narrowed and he crossed the room to the window. The hospital wouldn’t have left it open, especially not in the recent rains. He leaned out slightly, examining the multi-story drop to the ground. In the distance lightning flickered forked dragon’s tongues in the clouds. The air was heavy and the wind blew steadily. Storm weather.
Deliberately, Subaru straightened and slid the window shut.
“You dare....” The voice was a woman’s, low and rough with anger. It came from within the darkness of the room.
“Why are you doing this?” Subaru asked, right hand going automatically to his pocket. It was easiest, of course, when he could just talk the spirit into moving on, but with the angry ones that was almost always impossible.
“You closed the window. Why did you close the window?” There was a plaintive half-sob in the voice.
“It’s going to rain,” Subaru said reasonably, softly. “I didn’t want the room to get wet.”
“She always left the window *open*!” the voice screamed. The last word was accompanied with a blast of power and a storm of black feathers. One made a thin cut on Subaru's cheek. He ignored it and pulled out the first of the ofuda, holding it between his fingers as he murmured the ritual words to activate its latent power, the change in the universe made by ink and paper, breath and will, a mind concentrated on a result and the path to it. His power manifested amber and jade, a shield cutting off the attack.
A scream of fury emanated from beneath the bed and black wings unfolded, bearing aloft a small figure whose eyes blazed a strange shade of pink through the darkness.
"You can't replace her," the voice muttered almost to itself. "You can't replace her. No one can. I don't want a new *medium*!" The last word was screamed again, and accompanied by a new attack. It rolled off of Subaru's shield like so much water, but its force still pushed him back a few feet.
"She's gone," he said bluntly, eyes narrowed. "Why are you still here?"
"I want *Meg*!"
The name of the girl who'd died here. So, this wasn't her spirit after all, but something she'd befriended. A wandering ghost, or the spirit of a crow? That would fit the black wings and feathers. "She's gone," Subaru repeated. "Do you think she would want you hurting the other patients and nurses like this?"
"They let her *die*!" And there was a world of pain in that voice now, pain Subaru could understand only too well.
"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it even as he palmed another ofuda. "But you can't stay here any longer."
This time the shriek was wordless, with another flurrying attack. One of the feathers actually cracked Subaru's shield. But he was already activating the new ofuda, eyes closed as he murmured the spell's chant, hands adding to its power with the correct mudra positions. Serene, he remained untouched, detached from the world of flesh. Only the spirit mattered--and this opponent's was weak from grief.
As he opened his eyes, she came forward into the moonlight and he saw her clearly for the first time. A doll, with a face as pale as the moon, hovered in the air before him. Had the girl loved the doll enough to give her life? The ones left behind and unable to accept, to Subaru, were always the saddest.
The spell finished itself neatly, the last few syllables tying themselves together off his tongue, and attacked, cutting through the gale of razor-sharp feathers and blasting the doll up against the wall. She slid down it, stunned. She knelt on all fours, gasping for breath.
"You can't stay here," Subaru told her again. "The hospital needs this room for other patients. Is there anywhere else you could go?" Her breathing continued labored. "Isn't there anyone else you could love?" he asked more softly.
The doll looked up at him. "No," she denied softly, a single tear spilling down one cheek, and he understood, oh how did he understand, that her heart was broken. Then her expression hardened. "I will hate you," she vowed, standing. "I'll hate you all forever." She gathered herself for one last attack and Subaru automatically stepped aside. But she hadn't been aiming for him at all, but rather for the window, and crashed through it, disappearing into the darkness. Behind her, the first few drops began to fall.
Subaru automatically summoned a bird shikigami to follow the doll. He stood watching after her for a few moments before turning to complete his work. He knew he couldn't just let her go hurt someone again, but he'd nullified his chances of persuading her spirit to move on in a non-violent fashion. She wouldn't trust him again, not after he'd attacked her and expelled her from this room. He sighed, and knelt on the floor to begin a spell of cleansing and protection for the room. Then a smile quirked up his mouth.
If she wouldn't trust him, he wondered, what about his doll-aligned apprentice?
*
Jun woke up in the middle of the night to a crash. By the time he fumbled his glasses on and realized that there was glass all over his bed /again/ and thus it was one of those dolls, Shinku and Hinaichigo were already out of their cases and comforting the newcomer. He sat up, switching on his desk lamp and realized the sobbing doll was Suigintou.
He froze, wondering what the hell kind of plot the evil doll was up to this time.
"Jun-kun!" Nori burst through his door, her lacrosse stick held in both hands. "I heard a crash--" She stopped as she saw the new doll. He tried to remember if she'd ever met Suigintou. "Oh. Who is this?"
"Suigintou." Jun watched the doll shake brokenly in Shinku's arms, sobbing the other doll's name over and over again. "She's...." He stopped, unable to explain his feelings about the doll.
Shinku looked up. "Nori," she said while Hinaichigo stroked Suigintou's hair, murmuring words of comfort, "I think we need some tea."
*
Subaru was shown into the television room where the Tachibana family was gathered, watching a period drama. Kaoruko noticed him first and sprang immediately to her feet. "Subaru-san!" she said, coming over to him.
He met her halfway. "Kaoruko-san," he said, very aware of the gazes of her family on them.
"You said you had a job tonight." Her gaze fell to his cheek, to the cut there. "Oh." Her hand half-raised to it.
"I did," Subaru affirmed. "It's finished. Mostly."
"You got hurt." Her eyes were dark and worried.
He shook his head. "Only a scratch. The case is why I'm here, actually."
"Oh?" Kaoruko was a police detective, and no dummy. "You're here to see Sakon, then." She seemed to deflate a little.
"And you," Subaru ameliorated, not being stupid himself. "But Sakon as well."
Kaoruko sighed the melodramatic sigh of the defeated and led him back to the kotatsu, where everyone's legs were tucked under the blanket for warmth, though the heater was not on. Outside, the rain sizzled down on the rocks of the garden.
"Somethin' happen?" Ukon asked as everyone shifted to make room and Subaru sat down next to Kaoruko.
"You might say that." Subaru ordered his thoughts before addressing them to Sakon and his family. "The case was in the long-term care ward of a hospital. A particular room had become unusable due to 'things' happening in it. Telekinetic manipulation, an angry aura, violence to the patients and nurses... the usual," Subaru explained, knowing his definition of "usual" was far from that of the Tachibanas, who aside from Sakon lived very much in the world of physical reality only. "It turns out that there had been a young woman who died in that room shortly before the incidents began. The perpetrator appears to have been her doll."
That caught sharp interest from all five sets of eyes around the table. If the Tachibanas as a collective clan had a focal interest, it was dolls and puppetry.
"What was she like?" Sakon asked in his quiet way, but his eyes too were sharp.
"Very angry," Subaru replied. "And lost without her friend. Physically, she's about two feet tall, has long silver hair, magenta eyes, and dresses in dark blue clothing in a Western style. And she has black wings, which she seems to be able to subvert into feathered attacks." He resisted the urge to rub at the cut on his cheek. Feathers and cuts and bleeding reminded him keenly of Kamui.
"Wings?" Ukon demanded.
Subaru nearly smiled. "*Functional* wings," he emphasized, teasing just a little. Ukon's eyes widened, then narrowed and it didn't take a genius to know that he was coveting the other doll her wings.
"And this has what to do with Sakon?" Kaoruko inquired, head leaning on one fist, a bemused expression crossing her face.
Subaru resisted her baiting. Barely. "The doll fled," he replied. "I thought it was a case he might be interested in, given the physical nature of the spirit."
Sakon exchanged a glance with Ukon, then nodded. "Definitely," he replied, his interest shining in his eyes.
*
Jun wavered between staying as far away from Suigintou as possible, and placing himself between her and Nori and the other two dolls. In the end he settled for sitting on the other side of Shinku from Suigintou, on the theory that he could pull the blonde doll behind himself quickly is Suigintou started anything.
Curiously, though, the silver-haired Rozen Maiden didn't seem inclined to start any fights. She just sat at the table staring into her cup, looking miserable. She didn't touch the tea or the sweets Nori had brought our, though Hinaichigo was somberly eating between glances at Suigintou and even Shinku was sipping at her tea in her regal way.
In the end, it was Nori's kind heart that broke the silence. Setting down her teacup, she rounded the table and knelt down beside Suigintou's chair. Jun tensed as Nori raised a hand to stroke the doll's back and said comfortingly, "You're not hungry, are you? You don't have to eat if you're not." Suigintou raised a face to her, expression torn between disgust and tears. Tears won out, and she started crying again. Nori held the doll against her shoulder and stroked her back soothingly. "There, there. Cry it all out."
Jun watched as the doll's body shook with sobs again and asked quietly, "What's wrong?"
"Don't you see, Jun?" Shinku asked softly in reply. She nodded at his left hand, a sad expression on her face. "Her medium is gone."
Jun looked at the rose ring he wore on that hand. It would never come off--unless he or Shinku dissolved their contract. Or unless one of them....
"She's dead?" he asked stupidly. Of course the evil doll would have had a medium. She'd been so powerful they last time they'd met, even before she'd taken Soiseiseki's Rosa Mystica. But that her medium had died... that she had actually *cared* for that medium.... It seemed so at odds with what he knew about Suigintou.
Jun looked at the crying doll now wholly enveloped in his sister's arms. "I'm sorry," he said softly, and meant it.
The room had been kept locked for the last two weeks. Before that there were reports of strange telekinetic activities, dishes and vases and flowers suddenly flinging themselves at the occupants and whatever nurses or visitors happened to be nearby. At first the hospital administration had put the incidents down to accidents or overactive imaginations. Since the event that had admitted two of their best long-term care nurses to the hospital’s own emergency room, however, they’d changed their minds and called in a professional.
Sumeragi Subaru read over the faxed report with his mismatched eyes and stifled a vague feeling of dislike. He’d never really liked cases that happened in hospitals. Too many bad memories. But he was a pro by any benchmark—these days—and so flipped to the second page with a small sigh. The administrators of the Sumeragi estate in Kyoto tried to get as much information pertaining to each case as possible. This time, they’d included complete incident reports for each attack as well as a detailed history on the last patient in the room before the troubles began, a girl who had died of a long illness.
When he’d finished going through the entire stack of papers, Subaru set them down and attempted to discern what about the case was niggling at his mind. Finally, through deduction, he realized what it was and picked up the sheaf again, leafing through to the most recent, most violent attack.
“Black feathers...?” he murmured aloud.
Nakamichi Takashi nervously patted his pocket yet again, making sure the key was still there, as he paced beside the long-legged onmyouji whom the Sumeragi had sent over to take care of the hospital’s little problem. He personally would have been happy to leave the room locked and unused, but the scared nurses had petitioned over his head and gotten the board to call in a witch-doctor. At an exorbitant price, he mentally added. Well, if the incidents didn’t stop, they’d better not blame him if they couldn’t get their money back. He’d been against this whole idea since the beginning.
The onmyouji looked at him with those weird mismatched eyes (white and green... who had white and green eyes? had to be contacts) and said quietly, “May I ask your opinion on the matter, Nakamichi-san?” Somehow his voice was older and deeper than one would’ve thought for someone so young and skinny.
Takashi snorted. “To be honest? I’m not convinced it’s real.”
“Those nurses injured themselves?”
“People do crazy things when they’ve been on the job sometimes.” That was a fact. “Nursing is a stressful profession, and hospital shifts can be very long.” They reached the correct hallway, lights slightly dimmer than they used to be due to new energy-saving measures. Takashi turned right, taking the corner fast to force the onmyouji into a few extra steps to keep up. “You think differently?”
The man gave a half-smile, inoffensive. “Most likely it’s the spirit of the girl who died in that room,” he explained, as though to a fool. “There are other possibilities, however.”
“As long as you get rid of it,” Takashi grumbled. “That’s what we’re paying you for, after all.”
After the hospital administrator had unlocked the room for him and disappeared, the sweat on his brow belying his disbelief, Subaru cautiously pushed the door open. In the moonlight it looked like any other hospital room, empty and unremarkable. The weight of the ofuda in his coat pockets swung comfortingly against Subaru’s legs as he stepped into the room and shut the door behind himself. He didn’t bother to turn the lights on, letting his eyes adjust to the shadows. The white curtains wavered, ghostlike, in the breeze.
Subaru’s eyes narrowed and he crossed the room to the window. The hospital wouldn’t have left it open, especially not in the recent rains. He leaned out slightly, examining the multi-story drop to the ground. In the distance lightning flickered forked dragon’s tongues in the clouds. The air was heavy and the wind blew steadily. Storm weather.
Deliberately, Subaru straightened and slid the window shut.
“You dare....” The voice was a woman’s, low and rough with anger. It came from within the darkness of the room.
“Why are you doing this?” Subaru asked, right hand going automatically to his pocket. It was easiest, of course, when he could just talk the spirit into moving on, but with the angry ones that was almost always impossible.
“You closed the window. Why did you close the window?” There was a plaintive half-sob in the voice.
“It’s going to rain,” Subaru said reasonably, softly. “I didn’t want the room to get wet.”
“She always left the window *open*!” the voice screamed. The last word was accompanied with a blast of power and a storm of black feathers. One made a thin cut on Subaru's cheek. He ignored it and pulled out the first of the ofuda, holding it between his fingers as he murmured the ritual words to activate its latent power, the change in the universe made by ink and paper, breath and will, a mind concentrated on a result and the path to it. His power manifested amber and jade, a shield cutting off the attack.
A scream of fury emanated from beneath the bed and black wings unfolded, bearing aloft a small figure whose eyes blazed a strange shade of pink through the darkness.
"You can't replace her," the voice muttered almost to itself. "You can't replace her. No one can. I don't want a new *medium*!" The last word was screamed again, and accompanied by a new attack. It rolled off of Subaru's shield like so much water, but its force still pushed him back a few feet.
"She's gone," he said bluntly, eyes narrowed. "Why are you still here?"
"I want *Meg*!"
The name of the girl who'd died here. So, this wasn't her spirit after all, but something she'd befriended. A wandering ghost, or the spirit of a crow? That would fit the black wings and feathers. "She's gone," Subaru repeated. "Do you think she would want you hurting the other patients and nurses like this?"
"They let her *die*!" And there was a world of pain in that voice now, pain Subaru could understand only too well.
"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it even as he palmed another ofuda. "But you can't stay here any longer."
This time the shriek was wordless, with another flurrying attack. One of the feathers actually cracked Subaru's shield. But he was already activating the new ofuda, eyes closed as he murmured the spell's chant, hands adding to its power with the correct mudra positions. Serene, he remained untouched, detached from the world of flesh. Only the spirit mattered--and this opponent's was weak from grief.
As he opened his eyes, she came forward into the moonlight and he saw her clearly for the first time. A doll, with a face as pale as the moon, hovered in the air before him. Had the girl loved the doll enough to give her life? The ones left behind and unable to accept, to Subaru, were always the saddest.
The spell finished itself neatly, the last few syllables tying themselves together off his tongue, and attacked, cutting through the gale of razor-sharp feathers and blasting the doll up against the wall. She slid down it, stunned. She knelt on all fours, gasping for breath.
"You can't stay here," Subaru told her again. "The hospital needs this room for other patients. Is there anywhere else you could go?" Her breathing continued labored. "Isn't there anyone else you could love?" he asked more softly.
The doll looked up at him. "No," she denied softly, a single tear spilling down one cheek, and he understood, oh how did he understand, that her heart was broken. Then her expression hardened. "I will hate you," she vowed, standing. "I'll hate you all forever." She gathered herself for one last attack and Subaru automatically stepped aside. But she hadn't been aiming for him at all, but rather for the window, and crashed through it, disappearing into the darkness. Behind her, the first few drops began to fall.
Subaru automatically summoned a bird shikigami to follow the doll. He stood watching after her for a few moments before turning to complete his work. He knew he couldn't just let her go hurt someone again, but he'd nullified his chances of persuading her spirit to move on in a non-violent fashion. She wouldn't trust him again, not after he'd attacked her and expelled her from this room. He sighed, and knelt on the floor to begin a spell of cleansing and protection for the room. Then a smile quirked up his mouth.
If she wouldn't trust him, he wondered, what about his doll-aligned apprentice?
Jun woke up in the middle of the night to a crash. By the time he fumbled his glasses on and realized that there was glass all over his bed /again/ and thus it was one of those dolls, Shinku and Hinaichigo were already out of their cases and comforting the newcomer. He sat up, switching on his desk lamp and realized the sobbing doll was Suigintou.
He froze, wondering what the hell kind of plot the evil doll was up to this time.
"Jun-kun!" Nori burst through his door, her lacrosse stick held in both hands. "I heard a crash--" She stopped as she saw the new doll. He tried to remember if she'd ever met Suigintou. "Oh. Who is this?"
"Suigintou." Jun watched the doll shake brokenly in Shinku's arms, sobbing the other doll's name over and over again. "She's...." He stopped, unable to explain his feelings about the doll.
Shinku looked up. "Nori," she said while Hinaichigo stroked Suigintou's hair, murmuring words of comfort, "I think we need some tea."
Subaru was shown into the television room where the Tachibana family was gathered, watching a period drama. Kaoruko noticed him first and sprang immediately to her feet. "Subaru-san!" she said, coming over to him.
He met her halfway. "Kaoruko-san," he said, very aware of the gazes of her family on them.
"You said you had a job tonight." Her gaze fell to his cheek, to the cut there. "Oh." Her hand half-raised to it.
"I did," Subaru affirmed. "It's finished. Mostly."
"You got hurt." Her eyes were dark and worried.
He shook his head. "Only a scratch. The case is why I'm here, actually."
"Oh?" Kaoruko was a police detective, and no dummy. "You're here to see Sakon, then." She seemed to deflate a little.
"And you," Subaru ameliorated, not being stupid himself. "But Sakon as well."
Kaoruko sighed the melodramatic sigh of the defeated and led him back to the kotatsu, where everyone's legs were tucked under the blanket for warmth, though the heater was not on. Outside, the rain sizzled down on the rocks of the garden.
"Somethin' happen?" Ukon asked as everyone shifted to make room and Subaru sat down next to Kaoruko.
"You might say that." Subaru ordered his thoughts before addressing them to Sakon and his family. "The case was in the long-term care ward of a hospital. A particular room had become unusable due to 'things' happening in it. Telekinetic manipulation, an angry aura, violence to the patients and nurses... the usual," Subaru explained, knowing his definition of "usual" was far from that of the Tachibanas, who aside from Sakon lived very much in the world of physical reality only. "It turns out that there had been a young woman who died in that room shortly before the incidents began. The perpetrator appears to have been her doll."
That caught sharp interest from all five sets of eyes around the table. If the Tachibanas as a collective clan had a focal interest, it was dolls and puppetry.
"What was she like?" Sakon asked in his quiet way, but his eyes too were sharp.
"Very angry," Subaru replied. "And lost without her friend. Physically, she's about two feet tall, has long silver hair, magenta eyes, and dresses in dark blue clothing in a Western style. And she has black wings, which she seems to be able to subvert into feathered attacks." He resisted the urge to rub at the cut on his cheek. Feathers and cuts and bleeding reminded him keenly of Kamui.
"Wings?" Ukon demanded.
Subaru nearly smiled. "*Functional* wings," he emphasized, teasing just a little. Ukon's eyes widened, then narrowed and it didn't take a genius to know that he was coveting the other doll her wings.
"And this has what to do with Sakon?" Kaoruko inquired, head leaning on one fist, a bemused expression crossing her face.
Subaru resisted her baiting. Barely. "The doll fled," he replied. "I thought it was a case he might be interested in, given the physical nature of the spirit."
Sakon exchanged a glance with Ukon, then nodded. "Definitely," he replied, his interest shining in his eyes.
Jun wavered between staying as far away from Suigintou as possible, and placing himself between her and Nori and the other two dolls. In the end he settled for sitting on the other side of Shinku from Suigintou, on the theory that he could pull the blonde doll behind himself quickly is Suigintou started anything.
Curiously, though, the silver-haired Rozen Maiden didn't seem inclined to start any fights. She just sat at the table staring into her cup, looking miserable. She didn't touch the tea or the sweets Nori had brought our, though Hinaichigo was somberly eating between glances at Suigintou and even Shinku was sipping at her tea in her regal way.
In the end, it was Nori's kind heart that broke the silence. Setting down her teacup, she rounded the table and knelt down beside Suigintou's chair. Jun tensed as Nori raised a hand to stroke the doll's back and said comfortingly, "You're not hungry, are you? You don't have to eat if you're not." Suigintou raised a face to her, expression torn between disgust and tears. Tears won out, and she started crying again. Nori held the doll against her shoulder and stroked her back soothingly. "There, there. Cry it all out."
Jun watched as the doll's body shook with sobs again and asked quietly, "What's wrong?"
"Don't you see, Jun?" Shinku asked softly in reply. She nodded at his left hand, a sad expression on her face. "Her medium is gone."
Jun looked at the rose ring he wore on that hand. It would never come off--unless he or Shinku dissolved their contract. Or unless one of them....
"She's dead?" he asked stupidly. Of course the evil doll would have had a medium. She'd been so powerful they last time they'd met, even before she'd taken Soiseiseki's Rosa Mystica. But that her medium had died... that she had actually *cared* for that medium.... It seemed so at odds with what he knew about Suigintou.
Jun looked at the crying doll now wholly enveloped in his sister's arms. "I'm sorry," he said softly, and meant it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 07:35 am (UTC)*giggles*
no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 03:39 pm (UTC)...Unfortunately, he collects Victorian dolls. And Rozen Maiden is about animate Victorian dolls, so....
ARGH!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 07:28 pm (UTC)(And Muraki gives me hives too. Ugh.)
no subject
Date: 2006-02-08 01:42 am (UTC)And you should watch more Rozen Maiden. It's fun and I think you would like it.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 08:07 pm (UTC)Muraki is a oneshot villain who should never have become recurring except the mangaka fell in love with him. And doesn't seem to realise that the rest of us haven't Although he introduced us to Oriya, so I suppose I can cut him a little bit of slack. (He's much more palatable when Oriya's beating him over the head with a bokken too.)
Do you mind if I friend you by the way?
no subject
Date: 2006-02-08 01:33 am (UTC)And Rozen Maiden is good fun. Both series have been completely fansubbed by now, or are available from l33t-raws unsubbed. I know that TokyoPop has licensed the manga, but I don't believe it's out yet.
There are some freaky fans out there who also adore Muraki. I don't understand /why/. He's sick, twisted, evil... basically Hannibal Lechter, but with a thinner pretense. Though I agree on the Oriya beating him with a bokken thing. ^_^ Unfortunately my brain has dragged Yami-Ei into this story against my objections because that way lies *plot* as opposed to just pretty/fun.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-09 11:21 pm (UTC)