Chapter One: Glimpses
One quick look around the table and I realize quickly just where I fall in the visitor's list. This would be the so-called non-descript table. Important enough to attend, not important enough to have great seats for the show. Not that I consider myself important enough. To be honest, my seat and I are perfect given the occasion, at least in my opinion.
The round oak table is the host of seven other people. I came to the quick conclusion that this is the 'not really important, but important enough' table because the guy to my right was Michiru's manager for the better part of a few years in the first portion of her violinist career and the woman to my left is another sort of coworker. Everyone else sitting there had something to do with the event, from planning to catering to whatever else, and they were given invitations for the sake of politeness.
I have a pretty decent seat. It's the farthest in the room, stuck in a cozy little corner, not far away enough from the exit if it called for an early departure. About the only thing bad about it is the fact that the food is all the way in the other side, as well as the open bar. The dance floor is situated there as well, so I put this in the list of "good things". I arrive later than everyone else so by that time the lights are semi-dimmed and a slideshow is well on its way.
My eyes flitter through the crowd and wonder why so many are unfamiliar. Who are all the people on table eight? Who's the man with the clean, shaven, and hard face with pools of hauntingly familiar eyes? Who's the woman next to him, poised and elegant, as if she belonged perfectly right next to him? And the young boy sitting near them getting the appetizers all over his tuxedo sloppily?
Who are the people on table nine? People that are such strangers that I knew if I were to see them again elsewhere, I still wouldn't know them. Table five, table eleven, table seven, table two...
"Who are these people?" I whisper to myself and give a tired roll of the eye. Looking at the elegant woman on the head table, I grunt once more and take a drink of the champagne glass all of the sudden materializing near my hand. "Do you even know them?"
Or maybe...the annoying voice in my head state rather abruptly. You don't even know her. Cuz if you did, you would know all of these people.
Parched. Throat. Drink. All of it.
The bittersweet droplets splash on my tongue roughly, needing more but knowing that it's a bad idea.
I find table three to be my emotional refuge. There sat a flock of long, raven hair mingling with just as long, softly tended blondes. Near them, a bluenette, short, well kempt turning to a taller figure of ponytailed brown strands. Lastly, a couple: short jet black hair and blonde meatballs.
I find myself wishing I was in that table because I could personally acknowledge that I do...know her. At the very least, that aspect of her very, very few know.
Polite laughter sifts through the crowd, blaring my senses to the slide show. I'm suddenly glad I hadn't eaten a thing. Bile is liable to go back up and defy gravity with what I'm seeing.
Sweet pictures. Holding. Touching. Hugging. Kissing.
I turn away and wish the champagne glass would magically refill itself. But alas, things in Tokyo are hardly that particular anymore. When was the last time anyone saw pretty soldiers fighting for justice under a spectacular moonlight with no reason to it but love?
