Utena, Revolutionary Girl Fan Fiction ❯ Memory of the Rose ❯ Interlude of the Second ( Chapter 11 )

All that is gold does not glitter;

not all those that wander are lost.

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Interlude II

There was no pain, no fear, no doubt… at least until the last box had been neatly packed. There had been no tears, no hysterics after that stunning moment in the hospital where Kozue held him and rocked him and they wept together.

And thus they had returned to their apartment that they had shared with Juri.

It wasn't the same, and they both knew it.

Kozue left him to his silent contemplation in those early weeks following the funeral. She took her final compensation and began cleaning the apartment. It didn't matter. Those first days of boxes, he didn't notice or remember. He spent all his time in that too-bright summer locked away, studying in his room-- Juri had wished him to go to the University, and he would. He would do this last thing for her. He had no clue what was going on outside his door.

She came to him one night about two months after they had laid Juri low. Three hard raps on his door and she shoved it open with her hip. He looked up, but didn't move. Her blue hair fell over her cheeks in sweaty strings. Kozue held in her arms broken down cardboard boxes. Ten of them.

"Clean out her room," she said with a trace of her old arrogance, dropping the boxes on his bed and throwing a roll of tape after them. "Take what you want, the rest goes to charity."

And so he had packed the last room by himself.

Juri's room.

He started with the closet. There was no maudlin sniffing of her clothing as he packed but her best dresses still smelled faintly of the smoky scent of her skin, and the clean, crisp aroma of her hair. He folded these carefully, his hands moving automatically as he let his mind wander back to those first few days of living with Juri. How delicately they'd treated one another!

But her eyes had been both sad and bright. Always, her gaze had been so sad and bright.

He stripped her bed and removed the curtains.

He threw away all her cosmetics with an almost brutal simplicity-- he simply swept his arm across the vanity and into the trashcan at the end of the desk. He precisely packed all her books, tucking the smaller, more worn paperbacks into the corners of the boxes and lining the top with old issues of National Geographic.

The magazines she kept from her years as a model, he kept those.

Her binders of costume and dress designs, he kept. He even took a moment to thumb through a few of them, running his fingers over Juri's neat kanji and hirigana… even the careful romanji tucked into the upper left corner of each of her designs.

Finally he came to the paintings and the sculptures. These he simply removed and stacked.

He saved it for last.

It hung there on the wall as it always had; glossy, black and white, faintly coated by dust.

It spoke of a time before sickness-- of days and nights surrounded by peers and friends.

A simple class photo, taken in Juri's last few years of school at Ohtori Academy.

She stood at the front in her strange uniform… Kozue had reminded him that Juri had once been a member of the Student Council. Prestigious. Glamorous. Very Juri.

The longer he looked at it, the more he became certain… that face in the back was indeed Anshi's. Juri and Anshi had known one another in school. It was a sobering thought, once truly confirmed. It netted in the back of his mind like a fishhook. It wouldn't leave him in peace. Two weeks later he was approached by Juri's lawyer.

Any University of his choice would be paid for.

He and Kozue were given equal shares in her Arrisugawa Designs Incorporated.

She had kept her promise… Adam would never have to worry for money again.

And thus his wandering began.

He didn't know what gave him the idea to apply to Ohtori Academy. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Juri had been young there-- that his mother had once walked those halls and grounds with the smooth, unbroken walk of the healthy. Perhaps it had been the postcards Sari still occasionally sent-- overflowing with roses and her carefully formed script of text.

And so he left.

The night was surprisingly still and cool; no breeze stirred the last breath of summer. It was as if the world he knew where holding itself perfectly motionless that he might say goodbye to what he had known… that he might gather what he still knew to himself before embarking on the next step of his journey. He had sent ahead three boxes for his dorm room. One was a box of books in both English and Japanese. One was a small box of mementos: Touga had given him a riding crop and promised to visit him at the Academy, the horse Juri had given him, a small dagger Kozue had spent many smoldering nights teaching him how to wield, among other things…like every letter Sari had ever written to him. The final box had Juri's albums and, right at the top, the framed picture from her wall. All he carried on him was the backpack he had brought with him from New York, filled with clothing, a journal, some postcards for Sari… the bare necessities to get him on his trek to Ohtori.

This would be his last freedom before he met his destiny.

He knew this as surely as he knew the blue of Sari's eyes.

And so, bravely, he shouldered his pack and stepped onto the sidewalk beneath the apartment he and Juri and Kozue had shared for almost seven years.

"'Not all those who wander are lost,'" he murmured to himself as he adjusted his backpack across his shoulders. "Ohtori, here I come."

Adam vanished into the late summer night.