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Background Stories	By : Meirav Category: +S to Z > X/1999 Views: 1718 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own X/1999, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Disclaimer: I do not own X.

Author�s note: this story is
an attempt to draw some kind of a background story for parts of X�s character�s
lives that Clamp did not light for us. It is not a statement but a mere
opinion.

Author�s thanks: to my beta Kitsunia,
good luck with the finals!!!!!

**************************************************

Kigai
Yutu: A Dialog with an Answering Machine

�Tomoe.�

�I'm sorry. Work went longer than I thought, and I'm home late.I heard your message on the answering machine. I'm calling you now because you told me to call you.� Probably to report their father�s worsening condition. Never mind how worse Yutu�s father�s situation might get, walking into the man�s hospital room will only make things worse. So Yutu would walk into his apartment everyday, and turn immediately to his answering machine, an exile begging for news of his forbidden homeland. Tomoe would always tell him to call her but he never meant it, she never answered his calls. �Please call me back� was, he realized, a phrase of speech for her. �But, to catch you not home... � Of course she was home to hear this message; she�s screening his calls using her damn caller I.D. She probably sent her little daughter away from the room if she was there, might the innocent hear anything of the family�s black sheep.

�So, I'll leave a message in your machine. Your answering machine can record for a long time, right? It seems like I'll be able to talk a lot.�

Yeah, that�s right, he�ll talk until the tape in her machine will run out and she�ll have no other choice but to listen to him while he talks, waiting for him to stop. Then she�ll have to switch the tape, or erase his words and then maybe�maybe then she�ll start feeling remorse for what she�s doing and what she�s done; probably not.

�How are you? I'm still working seriously at the ward office.

�You doubt me. I really am taking my work seriously.�

She won�t believe him. No one in his family would believe him if they�ll see him in his office work, in his decent and normal appearance, making a living like a normal sane civilian.

He talked some more, coming up with a story about a young father who couldn�t make his mind up about a name for his daughter. In his story Yutu recommended Tomoe and told many great things about a girl he knew named Tomoe.

Of course it was a lie, half a lie actually. The original father wanted a name for a boy and thought �Kamui� was a good name. Yutu only told him half the story about the Kamui he knew and managed to get the man to change his mind. At the time he didn�t wonder how a simple civilian with no idea about the meanings of the name Kamui could have come up with it all by himself. He shrugged and went out to lunch.

�That reminds me. You called me at the Setagaya ward office the other day? I'm sorry, I think that was my paid-vacation day.�

It wasn�t her by the way; though Yutu didn�t know that, it was some old fling he had who called in rage to ask him where he was.

Yutu�s co-worker, who received the call, swung the little memo she made at Yutu the next morning as he arrived at the office. �A Tomoe-san called about you,� she said with a dubious smile.

Yutu the Flirt, Yutu the Playboy, melted into a confused, stunned man. Suddenly Tachi, his co-worker, noticed that Yutu�s beginning to show signs of his age. So far he must have kept them well tucked under his bright smiles.

�Tomoe-san? My sister called?�

Tachi�s hand stopped waving the memo. Shooting her eyes to the memo, she scanned the short venomous message and wondered why his sister would leave a remark about his cute little ass.

Must be another Tomoe�.

�Ah�uh��

Yutu wore a small painful grin and shrugged. �I�ll call her back, it�s okay, I know what she called me about.� He avoided eye contact with her.

He spent the rest of the work day cringed in his workstation, frowning slightly and looking very not-Yutu-ish.

He was sure Tomoe called him to give him word of his father�s death. Why else would she call him at work?

As soon as he got home, Yutu called his sister. Who didn�t answer of course. He called her mobile phone and got screened again.

Finally, after wringing his hands through his hair until he realized he was tearing it out with stress, completely crumbling down on the floor by his phone and answering machine, he called the hospital where his father was committed.

His father was fine. He even got out of bed his morning to take a stroll in the little garden. Yes, he�s looking better. No, there hasn�t been sign of metastasis developing.

No, I�m sorry, he will not receive your call. The nurse didn�t actually have to say that, but her tone when she gave excuses and avoided answering his request got the message through all right.

Yutu thanked her and hung up the phone. His father was all right. Must have been the other Tomoe that called him in the office. He should have known that his sister would never bother to contact him in any manner other then leaving a short message on his answering machine.

***************

Yutu was a difficult boy, getting dragged into�well, just about anything possible.

�Go with the flow� the message seeped into him when he first discovered his water controlling power. It helped him make some sense of his life so far.

If someone came up to Yutu and told him there was somewhere to go, he�d go there. If someone told Yutu to do something, he�d do it.

It made him into a wonderful student and a horrible brat at the same time. When he�d finish homework, he�d disappear through the back yard and off to find his friends hanging at some video arcade.

He drank alcohol when they drank alcohol�he smoked whatever they smoked. If they fell to the ground, too high or drunk to move, so would he.

Only he wasn�t like them, his home wasn�t a wreck, he had no learning difficulties or abusive parents or a childhood trauma that pushed him to such behaviors. He was there because he went along with their flow. He had money and he had charm and his �buddies� squeezed the two out of him as much as they could for their own benefit. It got him into a lot of trouble.

Yutu was born in an American military base in Okinawa and had spent some of his early childhood there. By the time that he was five his father had retired and they�ve left the base to a wealthy neighborhood in the Tokyo suburbs.

Tomoe was born just a little after they�ve moved. Yutu adored her with all his heart. When the neighbor�s mad pit-bull managed to climb the fence between the two house�s yards and charged the toddler Tomoe, Yutu sent their little traditional Japanese pond�s water to beat the beast away. That�s when he discovered his power. Tomoe held a special place in his heart ever since.

But let�s get back to Yutu�s early teenage years.

Yutu�s father was a warrant officer back in his days, the base�s quartermaster commander. When he retired his found no solace in any retirement hobby and soon became a caged lion, taking out his outbursts on his family and home.

The �go with the flow� Yutu couldn�t have been born into a stricter family.

Often Yutu wondered if, when he stumbled back home crashing and breaking his way into his bed, did he upset his father�s want to have a properly raised son or was it his father�s extreme (almost obsessive compulsive at times) sense of order he insulted.

The routine on mornings when a trail of destruction led to Yutu lying in his rumpled bed reeking of alcohol and a strange smelling smoke went like this: a good slap or two, a violent shove into the shower, a quick breakfast (which Yutu would spew out almost immediately due to hangover and other chemical�s residue) and off to school.

The number of times Yutu fainted in class or on his way to school grew increasingly as his friends began discovering new adventures to have, dragging Yutu around with them.

Yutu�s mother was a small woman. That�s the best way to describe her; small body, small hands, small feet, small frightened/awed eyes, small mind, small voice, small amount of control over her children.

She was knocked up by her future husband and forced to marry the big, hairy, foreign man out of fear of insult to her and her family�s name. Her parents hated her for going out with an American soldier in the first place and soon after her wedding stopped talking to her. They were both survivors of the Big Boy and their grudge for anything American they failed to convey to their daughter due to her little intellect and great innocence.

Tomoe was the family�s more stable member and as one, she soon realized she�s there to help hold this family together.

Her father was far too big for her, far too violent and strict to do anything but be a good girl and appease his constant rage.

Her brother was like water running through her fingers, unstoppable, unaffected. Her frustration at her failure at helping Yutu out might have been melted into the deep anger she feels for him now.

Tomoe helped her mother about with daily chores and translating her father�s thoughtlessly free flowing English into a sane-sounding conversation. And as soon as she realized her older brother was not helping at all with this disruptive family she grew an attitude towards her brother as if she was the bigger sister and he the smaller, constantly blundering brother.

Her age of reign over him didn�t last; Yutu did not stay around his home for long.

He stumbled back home full of bruises, with two ribs broken and a couple of more fractured, his shirt covered with spilled blood, alcohol and sewage, his nose quite disassembled, his left eye too swollen to be opened and his ears ringing ominously.

He had gotten drunk with his buddies. They told him it�d be fun to pick a fight with the motorcycle gang who were just fueling in the gas station across the arcade.

Just before he blacked out Yutu could hear his �friend� leave, chased away by angry motorcycles roaring them away. He was the only one beaten, he realized now, because he was not fully backed up. It wasn�t the first fight he got into and he knew that in their little gang they always backed each other up. Guess he was never really a part of the gang in the first place.

He tilted his painful head sideways and noticed he was laying by an open sewage flow (these neglected parts of the city had those) and that the water in the sewage was talking to him.

He smiled at them and tried to mumble through swollen wounded lips that this was because of the grass he�s been smoking.

The water offered him help once again.

Yutu shrugged and spent the next few minutes twitching with pain, fighting back the tears of bitter betrayal and hopelessness.

The water surrounded him, taking him into their filthy deeps. He united with them, letting his body go and turn into water and be carried away back home.

When he materialized again, he was by his home, clawing his way out of the sewage with swollen bleeding fingers. His head hurt and his sides hurt and his eyes hurt from choked-back tears. He was only fifteen; he was not supposed to be here like this.

****************

Tomoe discovered him first, following the foul smell of sewage to his room. She burst into tears of rage at his sight.

She screamed at him that he�s ruining everything she�s working so hard on. She kicked him and punched his sprawled legs with little girl�s fists.

He tried to cry but his left eye�s threat of searing even more was too much for him to bear.

His father burst into the room next, roaring and screaming, �What�s he done now? What�s he done now that little son of a bitch?� in that heavy American English of his.

Yutu�s father wanted to hit his son but at the sight of the young beaten body on the bed, those thoughts were erased.

They loved him, they really did, they were his parents and both of them loved their son in their own individual way. So much shame, anger and hopelessness ground their love down to a faint whiff of an emotion.

Their love for him�Yutu was the reason they were stuck with each other, their initial love for him was only limited.

As soon as Yutu woke up in the hospital bed, after a stomach pump, a long hospitalization period he spent sleeping off the pain and shame, his parents were informed and arrived at his room.

His left eye was not so swollen anymore and he could lay both eyes on them as they chose to stand further from his bed, within a safe emotionless distance.

His father spoke, telling him that from now on it�s just him in this world; they cannot take responsibility over him anymore.

His mother placed a bag by his bed; filled with some of his best clothes (those who weren�t ruined beyond repair by his mid-night adventures) and with his schoolbooks and utilities.

His father told him to contact them again if he ever makes himself into a respectable man again. The choice of the word �if� to describe the time of Yutu�s future recovery hurt more then anything.

They turned around and left. Yutu was alone.

He cried a lot.

*********************

Yutu lived in a park a few blocks away from his high school for a while. Hiding his bag of school belongings and clothes in the bushes, Yutu slept in the artificial lake. No one would say anything to the teenager, who chose to do his homework on the park�s lawn, would they? And no one could see him as he melted into water and flowed into the lake.

Yutu found a job at a huge dry cleaning shop where the customers were too rich and too impatient to check and see if any of their items were missing. Yutu chose to steal the ones of lesser importance anyway, the ones he knew they wouldn�t miss. And so his off school appearance would consist mostly of suburb�s yuppie out of fashion items.

Yutu became a skilled pickpocket of the clothes cast into his care, looking for a forgotten coin or paper money. These would make his breakfast, lunch and dinner money. Tips would also be useful for these purposes. Yutu discovered he had a knack for flirting with women when his stomach churned for food.

He stored his salary away to pay for his future collage payments.

His boss was very satisfied with Yutu due to the young man�s unrelenting loyalty and obedience, his ability to fix plugged tubes in the various machines and his keen eye for a doubtful female costumer to chit-chat and flirt into staying in the shop�s members list.

He allowed the boy to wash and iron his school uniforms in the shop, wondering how come such a good boy couldn�t do it in his own home.

The nights in the park were the most difficult part of Yutu�s early exile. Winter was coming and the lake�s water was freezing. The darkness all around, the lack of a bed to curl up on, a duvet to hide under, a pillow to cry into, was the worst of it.

But Yutu clawed his way out of those days with hard work and survival instincts of a sewage rat. He was promoted in the quickly expanding laundry shop and soon saved enough money to rent a tiny hole of an apartment to live in, away from the freezing park.

The tiny space serving as his home was little comfort to Yutu. When he woke up he did not hear his father roaring for his children to wake up or they�d be late for school. When he returned home he did not see his mother hanging the laundry on the rake out back. His sister�s bare feet did not tap lightly on the wooden floor outside his room�s door when he was doing his homework.

At night he�d lie on the tatami (he did not yet save enough money to buy a proper futon) and let the notion of exile seep in fully. He knew what it meant in the beginning only he wasn�t quite sure as to how to treat it. He soon learned how to wrap his heart with an iron shell and tell himself that it doesn�t matter, that he doesn�t need them anyway.

*********************

Yutu founded his collage studies by working in the launderette whenever he could, which wasn�t a lot and soon his apartment�s rent proved too much for his bank account. He was allowed to sleep in the shop on working days.

When Yutu couldn�t work he�d find a lovely looking lonely woman and flirt her into buying his lunch or dinner. Then they�d go to her apartment for one night of a roof above his head.

Sometimes he�d have long term relationships lasting a few months before breaking up finally when the enchanted woman realized Yutu felt nothing for her but the need for her money.

Gladly, his collage�s town was big and Yutu was clever enough to pick these women up from parts of the city as far away from each other as possible so one girl could not warn the others.

His collage years; Yutu preferred not to remember. They were just as dark as his living in the park days and they were equally lonely. Instead of his complete feeling of being lost he now felt the heavy moral burden of using these girls and the things he was doing with his body that he did not want nor enjoyed half as much as he showed.

**********************

The ward office was like a rope dangled at him in the deep filthy pit where he lay so far. As he clung to it with all his might it pulled him up to a cleaner, better life.

He saved enough money to rent a decent apartment of his own in Tokyo, where he had furnishing and a normally functioning kitchen and a wonderful view of a city which, by now he fully realized from the water�s talk, one day he would help destroy.

His co-workers were all women that helped Yutu, still with his clawing surviving skills, to stick around through the first hard months of work when you�re not quite familiar with your surrounding and what it is exactly that you need to do.

He flirted with his co-workers so much they couldn�t help giving him high reviews when their employer ran little polls to help screening unneeded work force.

He gave whatever services his employer demanded of him in the man�s office, late after-work hours whenever the time for cutting on manpower came.

Only when he took a look at his bank account�s figures did the idea that he did not have to skip lunches and dinners anymore seep through, that he had enough money to stop living like a hell bound sewage rat. He could live a normal life now; he could become a decent man.

He would call his family and talk to his father.

With shaking hands he clutched the phone receiver, his heart beating wildly with every dial tone. His head swam and his eyes were tearing but he clung to the receiver, dialing over and over again when he reached the answering machine, clinging like he clung to his life so far.

His mother answered the phone eventually, excusing herself for not answering earlier; she was outside hanging the laundry.

For a moment the soft tone of his mother�s voice, which he didn�t hear for almost ten years now, gave him the illusion that he was recognized and welcomed back into the family. His head felt light and dizzy.

But as soon as he said whom it was, his mother shriveled back, muttering and mumbling that she shouldn�t be talking to him and that she doesn�t want to talk to him and that Tomoe will deal with this and hung up the phone.

Yutu still held the phone�s receiver, blinking into his tears. His mother did not want to talk to him.

The receiver dropped to the floor.

For the first time since his last booze out some ten years ago, Yutu drank himself silly. When the bottle toppled over and splashed all over his floor Yutu melted into water and mingled with the highly alcoholic drink, completely soaking in every drop on intoxication.

He woke up three days later in a pool of fluids he did not want to think about and had come from within him. He cleaned them up with a blank mind and a cold heart.

Then he noticed the answering machine. It had a message in it. Yutu beat the �play� button so hard he almost broke it.

�Yutu-san, this is your sister Tomoe speaking, call me back on this number��

Her voice had changed! How mature she sounds now! Yutu smiled uncontrollably, folding his arms around his legs as he sat before the machine like a little boy again.

He dialed immediately and she answered him with the same frozen tone.

Was it the sound of playing children in the background? She had children! He was an uncle!!

�Mother called me and told me you�ve called home. It�s about time. Father is ill. He has lung cancer; he�s going through chemotherapy these days.�

All the words choking Yutu, demanding to burst out, suddenly disappeared, sucked out by shock.

�I�is he alright? Where is he hospitalized, when can I visit him?�

�Don�t visit him.� Tomoe�s voice was as hard as the steel shell Yutu built around his heart in exile. �He doesn�t want to see you. He�s angry at you for almost giving mother a heart attack.�

�But�but he told me to call when I�m a decent man�� Yutu kicked himself mentally for sounding like a hurt little boy.

�He doesn�t want to see you, end of discussion!� He could hear by her tone that she was about to hang up.

�Wait! What about you Tomoe-cahn, how are you?�

�It�s too late for that, goodbye Yutu-san��

�No, wait!!!� Too late, she hung up.

He drank himself silly again.

The following days he spent breaking down, getting drunk a lot, squirming out of bar fights with sheer luck and whatever charm he managed to hoist out of his drunken state.

He slept around; men, women, it didn�t matter. He wanted to catch some terrible illness to make him die faster. Maybe, he thought with a morbid smirk, he�ll be hospitalized in the same room as his father.

The thought of his poor tiny mother stranded by the hospital bed, lost amongst all these men and women who were immensely smarter then her, in constant need to watch over the huge man she never loved once in her life.

The thought of his father, so able bodied and healthy, caught in his Achilles heel of enjoying cigarettes and knocked into cancer by it. His great wonderful blond mane withering under chemotherapy as his large body slowly rotted away, eaten by cancer.

Yutu thought about it so much he wanted to die just to stop these thoughts from coming.

And he couldn�t come over and help them; he was exiled. He didn�t want to proof them that he�s a decent man anymore; he just wanted to see them; that was all.

And they hated him, would hate to see him there. The flow of Yutu�s life hit murky water.

********************

He wallowed in murky water until the day he was invited up to the office of Tokyo�s mayor�s secretary.

Kanoe meant not only a pseudo-stable relationship, but also a dam to stop his reckless flood from going any further down the waterfall.

She reminded him that 1999 was next year and that he may die then so what�s the point of wasting his life so early?

The sex wasn�t that bad though it left a somewhat acrid taste in his mouth, making him want to have a very long shower after each time.

He stopped drinking anything that wasn�t tea. He carved the teatime ceremony into his daily routine. He found something to obsess about the meaning of in Satsuki�s strange being and stopped thinking depressing thoughts of his father.

He started dressing better, eating better, making sure he got enough sleep everyday. He quit smoking completely.

He bought the ninja whip and practiced it three hours before sleep, after jogging around the park near his home and after two hours in the gym every free morning he had.

The only little leisure time he afforded himself was a trip to the arcade where he�d reminisce and play the odd video game, trying to figure out the new technology and games that developed since his boyhood days.

Tomoe called every month or so to give snippy, bitter little news of his father and never returned his calls when he wanted to talk to her a little.

Now that the fatal 1999 was nearing, Yutu found that he was emptying his life of anything that wasn�t being a harbinger, including his family.

Whenever he called his sister he�d leave a long message on her answering machine with his latest tales. He knew she�ll erase it and didn�t care anymore.

Maybe if the world was destroyed and some other human-like creature would evolve one day it�d find Tomoe�s answering machine and, with an archeologist�s curiosity, bring back his recorded voice to be heard once again. Maybe.

Yutu always finished his calls to his sister with a bit of sappy thanks or a word about his status amongst them. Why he did it he didn�t know but he couldn�t stop himself from doing it either.

�Tomoe. Do you want me to take you to Shinjuku sometime?�

�Is he high on something?� she�d probably wonder, Yutu didn�t mind anymore.

�You know, Tomoe. It's nice to live wishing for something, thinking, �Let's do this, I want to do that� -- but it's not bad to live �for the time being� and �going with the flow� either. What you are, how you were born. Sometimes you understand when you live naturally.�

What would she make of that? He didn�t know. Maybe she�ll sit before the machine in silence, pondering. He hoped she�d realize the flimsy, halfhearted explanation of his teenage behavior in those words. And maybe she won�t even listen to this.

�I'm happy that you worry about me, someone that isn't as steady as others.  But you have to take care of yourself sometimes, too.�

�Hah! Why would I worry about you? You�re tripping!� he hoped she wouldn�t say. He hoped she�d listen to the first half of that, his description of himself.

�Oh, I think this machine is going to cut me off soon. I'll call again.�

And she won�t answer again.

�Don't catch a cold.�

�Tripping!�

�My dear young sister Tomoe.�

�When were you ever the older brother Yutu?�

�This was your only brother, Yutu.�

Outside his window a dark red dragon-shaped lighting bolt exploded above Sunshine 60. The presence of his �Kamui� working his powers tickled under Yutu�s ribs.

He stared outside and took a deep breath, exhaling it with a sigh. This year his flow will lead to his death, as he wanted it to be.  A man without a past cannot have a future.

His work was no obligation strong enough to make him want to heal the deep wound in his heart.

No partner he could ever have would mean anything that deep for him ever since the days when he used his body to pay for a roof above his head until sex was disgusting to him.

Satsuki was�well�different, but she will never come to love him and when she will, her Beast will kill her for it, or kill him which will be much preferred.

Maybe a Dragon of Heaven will kill him and end his flow of life.

Living naturally was not made for humans who build homes and a family around themselves to stabilize their life. If Yutu were a fish or a bird or an animal of the forest maybe he�d flourish in a life that flows but as a human, he was done for from the beginning.

At least it will be over within this year.

Every river flows on to the sea where it mingles with the water of other rivers gone lost, mingling it�s unique water with everybody else�s until it�s no longer a river.

(end)

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