Haibane Renmei Fan Fiction ❯ Kazakiribane ❯ The Dawn of Changes ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: "Haibane Renmei" and its associated characters & places used within this story are based upon Yoshitoshi ABe's original concept: "Charcoal Feathers in Old Home". They remain the undisputed property of the owners that hold copyright. I am writing this story for free enjoyment and not for profit, but even so I maintain creative ownership of my own story concepts. None of this story is to be copied or reproduced etc. without my knowledge or permission.

This Fanfiction is a story concept that I'd had in my head for quite awhile now. There's quite a lot of it that I'm still tweaking here and there for continuity issues before the story can be completely finished, but I'll post it in segments as I finish editing them. Read on... and feel free to leave a review if you are so inclined.

Kazakiribane - Chapter One: The Dawn of Changes
By Shizukana Sakka

It was yet another unremarkable morning that would undoubtedly herald another unremarkable day. The young boy had been awake for a while now, but he kept his eyes closed while he tried in vain to re-enter the wonderful world he visited in his dreams. Much to his chagrin, his awareness of the miscellaneous sounds throughout the house continued to increase despite his eyes remaining closed. He could clearly hear the other members of the household as they went about their morning routines and got ready to meet the day. After a few minutes, he realized that he wasn't going to be able to fall asleep again. Even if he did, it was a school day and someone would be sure to come along and wake him up if he overslept. He sighed deeply to himself and opened his eyes to glance around the bedroom he slept in. That was how he'd always seen it: 'the bedroom that he slept in'. Never his room. Although, to be fair, this was probably one of the nicest families he'd been placed with so far.

He was an orphan, or a parentless foster child to use a more politically-correct term. As far back as he could remember, he'd been living with families that were not his own. Sometimes he would be placed with a family for only a few months, and at other times -- like his current placement -- it lasted for a couple of years. With his childhood being uprooted so often, he grew accustomed to the constant probability of being forced to move into another living situation. As a result, he tended to be very quiet and withdrawn. He wasn't exactly anti-social, but he never saw the point of trying to become anything more than a casual acquaintance with anyone since he'd never been around long enough to form deeper friendships. This was especially true for the families he'd stayed with. Now, at the age of 13, he was weary of the pattern that his life seemed to follow. While his days weren't actually unpleasant, they just didn't seem to hold much joy or excitement for him. What little comfort he did find was usually at night in the landscapes of his dreams.

Over the past couple of years, he'd learned a little bit about dreams here and there from the various schools he'd attended. It had come up every so often in classes, and what he'd discovered from listening to others was that his dreams would probably be considered a bit unusual to most people. Most people's dreams tended to be a bit of a variety of things, but in his case, particularly over the last few years, his dreams were always the same. Every time he went to sleep, it was as if he was part of another place and he was a completely different person. By morning, he wasn't able to remember very much, but by the next evening he was back in that strange world again... and he was always that same person. The biggest disappointment he faced each day was waking up in the morning and realizing that other world wasn't real.

A gentle knock on the door disrupted his thoughts.

"Joey... are you awake yet?" called a gentle voice from outside the room. "You don't want to be late for school, you know."

"Umm... yeah, I'm up. I'll be downstairs in a few minutes, Heather" he called back.

Heather, his foster mother, was actually pretty cool. She didn't insist on him calling her 'Mom' when he'd come to live with her family, unlike some of the others in the past had. Although she did try to get him to 'open up' a little more, she was never too pushy or invasive about it. While he knew that she was sometimes a little discouraged by her lack of progress with him, she never showed it. She was usually pleasant and always had a kind smile.

Joey got himself out of bed and made his way into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He wasn't really in any particular hurry to get down to the breakfast table and was content to let most of the time slip by so he could just grab something simple as he headed out the door to school. Occasionally, he did feel a little guilty about this habit of his. He tended to avoid as many opportunities to socialize with his foster family as he could, because he knew it would just hurt more when he would inevitably be separated from them. Heather's teenage son and daughter, Tom and Lisa, both attended the local high school and were a little less understanding of Joey's 'loner' behavior. They didn't really bother him too much about it, but from time to time they'd openly asked him if he just didn't like any of them for some reason or was he just some kind of a snob. Since the two teens had much busier social lives, the only time Joey really ever saw them for any great length of time was in the mornings before everyone left for school. For Joey, he felt things were just easier if he went about his morning routine after they did and saw as little of them as possible.

After he'd finished up in the bathroom, he took his time getting dressed until he heard Tom and Lisa leave. After he was sure they'd been gone for a few minutes, he rushed down the stairs and apologized to Heather for being so late. She gave him the same small smile that she usually did -- implying that his avoidance tactic really wasn't fooling her -- and handed him his lunch and an extra banana to eat as he hurried out the door.

"Good luck in school today!" she called after him and then sighed to herself as she returned to her own daily routine.

----

The walk to school was the usual non-event that it was every day. As he drew nearer to the school, he saw a few of his classmates as they walked together in pairs and small groups. They'd long since given up asking him to walk with them, but they never gave him too much grief over it. It had become an unspoken understanding amongst most of the other kids at school that Joey was simply very quiet and usually preferred to be alone. He was usually friendly enough when involved in things that required his participation, but always seemed to return to his quiet state at the earliest possible opportunity.

In class, their teacher was of a mixed opinion concerning Joey. Mr. Gibson was quite a popular teacher with the students, as he seemed to have lots of ways to make learning fun. Despite his good rapport with most of his students, he was never sure what sort of response he would get whenever he called upon Joey. Most of the time the boy seemed really shy and withdrawn. His teaching experience had helped him to develop all sorts of approaches to best help the more timid children, but Joey was a bit of a puzzle. Over time, it had become clear that the boy wasn't shy but that he simply preferred not to be noticed if he could help it. Mr. Gibson knew that Joey was an exceptionally bright student, for he always had the correct answers to every question asked of him -- even if it seemed as though he hadn't been paying attention.

Mr. Gibson had looked into Joey's file and learned that he'd been though several foster families during his lifetime, including the current family he was living with. There was very little clue as to his true origins and it was likely that the boy himself didn't know any more about it than his teacher did.

After the morning bell had rung to signal the official start of the class, Mr. Gibson prepared to show the students his special introduction to the Geography module he wanted to start that week with them. One of the reasons that he was so effective with his students was that he had all sorts of methods for encouraging genuine interest in his lessons. Since Japan was subject of this module, he smiled to himself as he knew exactly how he could pique the interest of his students. He brought out a portable A/V stand with a monitor and a playback unit and proceeded to show the class a series of short video clips from Japanese Network Television that he'd edited together. There were a couple of brief news clips, a few commercials, some quick scenes from a talk show and finally a few segments from some popular Anime shows. Mr. Gibson knew that the latter of these would really get his students' attention since he was reasonably sure that a lot of them already watched some of these shows regularly - albeit English-dubbed.

As expected, the clips went over quite well with the kids and they were all quite enthusiastic during the discussion that followed. Even the enigmatic Joey had seemed to perk up a bit with the new material, so Mr. Gibson decided to see if he could encourage the boy's interest a little more.

"Joey, what did you think about the clips? Did you find them interesting?" He asked.

Joey didn't answer immediately and for a brief moment Mr. Gibson figured he'd gone back into 'quiet mode' and was prepared to move onto another student when Joey finally answered him.

"I thought the talk show was kind of neat, but some of the words across the bottom of the screen were wrong. It made those parts look a little silly."

A few of the students turned around to look at Joey with puzzled expressions. This would normally have the effect of making Joey shrink back down into his 'unnoticeable' mode, but this time he didn't seem to notice. Mr. Gibson was a bit puzzled himself.

"What do you mean, 'the words were wrong'? Do you mean the translation?" he asked Joey.

"Umm... yeah. It looked kinda weird."

A couple of the other kids in class started to snicker a bit as they thought that Joey was trying to play a joke on the teacher. A few more began to excitedly whisper amongst themselves. As for Mr. Gibson, if it were any other student he might have thought the same thing. But Joey wasn't an ordinary student, and now his own curiosity had been piqued. He turned the monitor back on, turned off the subtitle feature of the playback unit, and then he re-played the same clips to the class. As expected, all of the kids were a bit confused by the spoken Japanese without any subtitles to read, but Joey was the notable exception. While Mr. Gibson was watching Joey carefully during the playback, it became quite clear that the boy wasn't making any of it up. Somehow, it appeared that he had some understanding of spoken Japanese. There hadn't been anything in the boy's records to indicate that he had such a skill, so when and how did he learn it? This was starting to get a little spooky and it would probably be better to look into it a little later. Not wanting to draw too much attention to this quite remarkable discovery, Mr. Gibson asked a few other students some questions about the clips and then moved into the lessons for the morning.

As the morning wore on, Joey had reverted to his usual un-obtrusive form and by lunchtime it seemed that everyone had forgotten the sudden out-of-the-ordinary linguistic skills of their classmate. As the students filed out past him for lunch break, Mr. Gibson called Joey over to him for a moment. When the last of the students had left the room, he pulled out a DVD case and showed it to Joey.

"Have you ever seen this movie before?" He asked.

"No," was the boy's simple reply.

"Do you know what this says?" Mr. Gibson asked as he indicated the writing on the cover.

Joey narrowed his eyes briefly as he scanned the cover and then replied, "Princess Mononoke"

Being that he was a bit of an avid Anime fan himself, Mr. Gibson had his own personal collection of shows and movies from Japan. The one he'd shown to Joey was the Japan-released version of that movie, which had completely different imagery on the front as well as combined kana and kanji titling. Clearly, the boy seemed to have some ability to read Japanese text as well. He found himself wondering not for the first time, who exactly is this boy? He took a deep breath and leaned back into his chair.

"How is it that you can understand Japanese, Joey?" Mr. Gibson asked him gently as he noticed the boy was starting to appear really nervous.

"I... don't know. It just seemed so... familiar to me somehow."

Mr. Gibson found himself at a loss for words and simply gazed at his very surprising student for several moments. Joey fidgeted under his gaze and had begun to wish that he hadn't said anything at all during class that morning. It drew too much attention to him and that made him feel very uncomfortable.

Mr. Gibson shook himself out of his thoughts and decided to downplay the situation a bit to allow his student to feel a little more at ease. He certainly didn't want to scare the boy off or discourage him from participating in class discussions in the future.

"Well, I noticed in your file that you've lived with a few different families in the past. Perhaps when you were really small you'd learned some Japanese at one point and maybe some of it just came back to you.”

The boy seemed to look thoughtful for a moment as he considered this and then shrugged lightly. His body language was starting to lose a lot of the tension he'd been displaying so Mr. Gibson decided to dismiss the topic for now. He changed the subject and talked for another couple of minutes about how well Joey was doing in class and then dismissed him for the remainder of the lunch period. After his student had left, his thoughts returned to the puzzle that was Joey. Where had this boy come from?

-----

As the end of the school day approached, Joey was eager to just get out of there and find some space to himself. Although he was pretty successful at hiding it, he was still feeling a bit unsettled by the events in class earlier that morning. He was sure that his teacher was now overly curious about him now and that was sure to make things a bit uneasy in the near future. When the last bell of the day finally sounded, he surprised a few of his classmates by being the first one out the door when he was often one of the last.

He was in no hurry to get back to his foster family's house -- he was still reluctant to actually call it 'home' -- so he decided to walk to a nearby park to think for a while. While not completely devoid of people, the park was reasonably large so he was able to find a secluded place to rest with little difficulty. He thought back to what Mr. Gibson had spoken with him about earlier. It was a bit surprising to suddenly discover that he knew another language, and Japanese no less. As far as he knew he'd never read or heard any Japanese before that morning, but he had to have learned it from somewhere. Maybe his teacher was right about him picking it up when he was too young to actually remember it. It was really unsettling that he didn't know much more about himself than a stranger would from reading his school files.

Before too long, he started to feel the beginnings of a headache. Probably from the stress of thinking about this too much, he thought to himself. Maybe if he was lucky it would turn into something more, like a decent cold or something similar that would allow him to skip school for a day or two. If nothing else, it was as good an excuse as any to return to his foster family's house and to keep to himself in the room he used. He wouldn't actually be lying when he told Heather that he wasn't feeling well, so maybe she'd encourage Tom and Lisa to give him some space. What he was really looking forward to was having a nice, soothing shower after finishing his homework and then hopefully going to bed early. He was eager to return to that place in his dreams which was the only place he felt truly comfortable in.

As he was leaving the park, he glanced briefly at some of the people he passed. There were a few kids a little younger than him playing together in the park, and a pair of even younger children that were playing on the swings while their mother watched. He sighed wistfully as he wondered who his own mother was and what she was like. Was she still alive? If so, why did she give him up? Did she even think of him at all? He grimaced as he felt tears start to form in his eyes. Despite his best efforts to avoid these depressing lines of thought, he'd gone and done it again. Not only was he on the verge of bursting into tears but his headache was getting worse, too. Turning in early for bed that night was beginning to look really appealing.

He carefully wiped his eyes while he walked and did his best to avoid passing near enough to anyone who might be able to tell he'd been crying. Aside from being embarrassing, it was just more attention that he'd rather do without by that point. He spared a passing glance back at the younger children as he left the park and suddenly stopped dead in his tracks as he saw something VERY strange. He rubbed his eyes and looked again at the children, but the strange sight he saw was still there.

The children were playing normally as they had been before, but now they seemed to have some sort of shimmering glow outlining them. After a minute or so of staring to ensure that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him, he started to look around at some of the other people in the park. When he looked at their mother, she also had a glow surrounding her, although hers was slightly different in colour and much less intense than her childrens'. He soon discovered that if he looked carefully enough that he could see this strange effect surrounding everyone he saw. He closed his eyes tightly and shook his head to try to clear it.

'Something must be really wrong with me,' he thought to himself.

After a few moments, he carefully opened his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief as he looked around and realized that his eyesight had returned to normal. Whatever that strange effect was, it was gone and with a bit of luck he wouldn't have anything weird like that happen to him again. He noted with a bit of optimism that his headache was starting to come back under control, but he still hoped he'd be lucky enough to use it to avoid school the next day. Although it was still only late afternoon, Joey was more than ready to write the rest of the day off. He recalled with a touch of amusement that he'd assumed this day would be as unremarkable as the rest of them usually were. Well, he'd certainly called that one wrong.

----

After he'd returned to the house that evening, Joey's headache finally began to subside. There hadn't been any more instances of strange coloured lights around people since that afternoon. He'd guessed that maybe what he'd seen earlier was simply his eyes playing tricks on him as a result of the headache at the time. At least, he HOPED that was all that it was.

Dinner was a pretty ordinary affair at the household. Mr. Jameson -- or Hank as he preferred Joey to call him -- had returned home from work not long after his teenage children had come in. As usual, he was in a pleasant mood and showed genuine interest when he asked everyone -- including Joey -- how his or her day went. Hank always seemed to carry a certain presence about him that made it virtually impossible not to like him. Joey had experienced enough indifference on the part of previous foster families to appreciate how exceptional Hank's attitude towards him was. As such, Joey had a great amount of respect for this man who had welcomed him into his household.

The evening passed pretty much as it usually did after dinner and Joey mostly kept to himself. The other members of the household, while still a little disappointed, respected his desire for some solitude and left him to his own devices. He stayed in the upstairs room he used and did his homework until it was late enough in the evening that he could have his shower and turn in for the night. He really enjoyed sleeping; not so much for the rest but for the anticipated return to that strange world that he knew was waiting for him each night. If he could get away with it, he knew he'd prefer to go to bed right after dinner and sleep until the next morning. Unfortunately, if he spent that much time sleeping he knew it would raise concerns with his foster family and that would probably end up being far more of a hassle than it was worth. After drying off from his shower, he quickly got into bed and fell asleep within moments.

----

There were brightly coloured trees in every direction. Their vibrant colours implied the autumn season, yet the air felt warm and pleasant. Just by willing it, he found that he was able to move through the woods but he was unsure of exactly how he was traveling. Although he had legs, he wasn't exactly walking... yet he was moving swiftly amongst the trees and foliage. It felt more like... flying? He didn't know where he was headed, but he felt some sort of beckoning that was pulling him forward. He didn't know why, but he could sense it was important. Suddenly, there was a bright flash and then...

He felt warm... and weightless, like he was floating. The light was very subdued, but not completely dark due to a small amount of diffused light filtering in from... somewhere. He could hear muted sounds that seemed to come from all around him. He focused on the faint sounds and realized that they were voices. Voices of at least a couple of people engaged in some conversation nearby... but where was it coming from? A soft tapping noise sounded to one side of him, giving a clear bearing to its direction of origin. As he moved his arms and legs, he felt the dragging sensation as if they were moving through fluid. All at once, he realized that he WAS immersed in fluid! He experienced a brief moment of panic thinking that he'd drown, but then realized that for some odd reason he was still able to breathe. He resumed his movement in the direction of the tapping noise and encountered a soft barrier of some sort. The voices could be heard much clearer here and he could almost make them out. They sounded like girls' voices. Using his fingers, he began to carefully scoop away at the soft barrier, which came away with little effort. Just underneath, he encountered a harder substance and tentatively knocked on it. It seemed pretty durable, but some instinct within him insisted that it was not invulnerable. He started to strike the surface repeatedly, putting a little more force into each blow. He was encouraged when he saw cracks begin to form in the surface. With a great effort, he struck the surface as hard as he could and felt it explode outwards. Suddenly there was a roaring noise from all around him and he felt a strong current that pulled him forward into a bright light...

-----

… He slowly opened his eyes, and as they came into focus he saw that he was lying on his stomach in a comfortable bed. He was greeted by a pleasant voice next to him.

"Ah, you're finally awake! How are you feeling?"

He looked over at the owner of the voice and saw a pretty girl who appeared to be in her late teens sitting in a chair next to the bed. She was dressed in a simple but elegant skirt and blouse combination and offered him one of the most dazzling smiles he'd ever seen. So captivated was he by her smile and pleasant demeanor that he'd almost failed to notice a couple of peculiar things about her. Hovering a few inches above her head was a strange glowing ring and he could make out the tips of a pair of wings peeking out from just behind her shoulders.

He sucked in his breath in a surprised gasp.

'She's an angel... I must be dead,' he thought to himself.

She waited patiently as the figure on the bed continued to stare at her incredulously. She was used to this reaction from the New Feathers. She remembered her own experience of her birth into their world and well understood the feelings of disorientation.

He suddenly realized that she was still awaiting a reply from him and felt how dry his throat was as he tried to speak. Much to his surprise, his voice sounded a little strange to his ears.

"I'm... a little tired, I think," he answered in a soft soprano voice. He tried to sit up, but his body felt so heavy that he collapsed back down onto the pillows.

"That's normal for newborns," she said soothingly. "The weakness and fatigue should go away fairly quickly."

Unsure of what else to say to her, he nodded in understanding although he wasn't really sure if he did. She'd said 'newborn'. Did that mean that he wasn't actually dead?

"I'm sure that you have many questions," she continued in that same soothing and gentle voice of hers. "But before I can answer them, I need to ask you about your dream."

For a moment, he wasn't sure what she was referring to since he'd considered the likelihood that he was still dreaming right now. Then he thought back a bit. It was a little hazy, but he recalled that he was going someplace… and there were trees. Lots of trees. In that same soft voice that still felt a little strange to him, he described what little he could remember to the girl.

She looked thoughtful for a moment and then turned her attention back to him with another of those dazzling smiles of hers.

"It is our tradition that we choose our names based upon whatever our cocoon dreams were. In my dream, I dreamt that I was falling through the clouds from a great height, but for some reason I wasn't frightened by it. This is why I had been given the name Rakka, which means 'falling'."

Her eyes unfocused for a moment as she thought again about the description of her patient's dream.

"Hmm, lots of trees... kind of like a forest?"

Rakka looked thoughtful for a moment as though she was recalling some distant memory. She then looked back at the figure in the bed and smiled.

"I know! Your name can be... Mori."

He opened his mouth to reply that he already had a name, and it was... what was his name? For some reason he couldn't remember. Come to think of it, he couldn't remember anything about his identity. Not knowing what else to do, he decided to go along with Rakka's suggestion.

"I... guess that's okay," he replied softly.

"That one sounds pretty good," said a new voice from the corner of the room.

Rakka and her patient both looked back towards the doorway of the room as the owner of the voice stepped in and approached the bed. Like Rakka, she also possessed a pair of wings on her back as well as a glowing ring in stationary orbit a few inches above her head.

"Hi Kana! Welcome back," Rakka greeted her brightly. She turned her attention back to her patient and made proper introductions.

"Wh.. who are you people? What is this place?" he asked, his voice not much more than a whisper as he tried to take in the enormity of his situation.

"We call ourselves the Haibane," Rakka began. "It basically means `Ash Feathers'. We are all born into this world in the same way that you were. No one really knows where we came from before this, as none of us can remember anything from before we hatched out of our cocoons -- other than bits and pieces of our cocoon dreams, that is."

"A few of us even have trouble remembering that much," said yet another new voice.

Behind Kana, four more of the pseudo-angels entered the room and introduced themselves. The tallest of them was a young blonde woman named Hikari. Next to her was a younger girl with short, black hair named Chou, as well as two twin girls named Umi and Hoshi that were identical to each other except for the fact that one had black hair and the other's was brown. They all appeared to range in age from mid-teens to early-twenties, but he conceded that didn't necessarily have any bearing on their true ages.

Rakka introduced Mori to the group, and they smiled their approval of their newest companion's name.

Rakka reached over to help him sit up and he noticed for the first time that he was dressed in a long, simple gown of some kind. As he sat upright, he felt something fall in front of his eyes and he absently reached up to brush it away. He was pleased that even though his arm still felt weak it was getting easier to move it, although he felt an odd twinge of discomfort from his shoulders when he did.

'Wait a sec,' he thought to himself. 'What was that in my eyes a moment ago?'

He reached back over his shoulder, grimacing slightly as he felt another slightly painful twinge from his back, and pulled a long lock of chestnut-brown hair into view. Suddenly, a strange realization struck him. Long hair, a soft soprano voice and... he carefully patted himself down on his chest and felt what were undeniably the beginnings of a young girl's breast growth.

'I'm a girl!' he thought to himself in shock.

That in itself was a bit of a surprise since he couldn't remember anything about who he was before he'd awakened in that room. He shouldn't even be aware that being a girl was any different from who he had been before, but for some reason he knew that much was definitely different. Along with everything else he'd just experienced, the shock was nearly overwhelming.

The other Haibane in the room didn't seem to notice the sudden surprised look on his face, or if they did they likely mistook it for amazement. The girl who had introduced herself as Chou approached him with an oddly-shaped pan from which she used a pair of tongs to withdraw a brightly glowing ring. She held it over his head and it made a gentle humming noise for a few moments as it settled into position a few inches above him.

"Feather Mori," she said in a gentle, yet formal tone of voice. "To help guide your future as a fellow Haibane, I present to you this halo. May it always help to guide your way. Welcome to Old Home, sister Feather!"

After hearing the 'sister' reference, it was the one last item to finally overload Mori's grasp of (her) situation. (Her) eyes fluttered slightly and then she collapsed back down onto the bed.

Kana approached the bed and gently prodded Mori's prone form.

"Hmm... I guess she must still be really tired."

AN: As I'd said, there's MUCH more to come, so stay tuned!