jupiter blues! ━ cedric diggory

001

i. A SPONTANEOUS (BUT ILLEGAL) TRIP

"NOTHING IS PERMANENT. EVERYTHING IS
SUBJECT TO CHANGE. BEING IS ALWAYS BECOMING."
- Buddha

 

SUMMER BROUGHT CARMEN DAYS FULL of teenage joy, from the summer festivals to the quidditch matches with her schoolmates to spending time in the maguru world. She always believed that magic's main purpose was to enhance the quality and aesthetic of life, and the way that the maguru people were able to do just that without the help of magic was fascinating. Some days, Carmen found herself daydreaming of what it would be like to live in the maguru world.

With her broomstick resting over her shoulder and her straw hat hanging from her neck with simple brown string, Carmen strolled home for lunch. She would have liked to stay at her friend's house so she wouldn't have to walk this much, but a promise was a promise — a morning of quidditch, and then go home.

As she began to stray from the main road, more flowers started to appear alongside the cement. The grass grew longer and weeds became more common among the swaying camellias. Ahead was the same pond that Carmen had passed by hundreds of times, and just beyond it was the familiar dirt road that would lead her into the forest and ultimately to home. Carmen skipped off the cement and onto the beaten path, disappearing into the trees.

Carmen was no stranger to the strange. Most days and nights, she would hear her parents tinkering with some new invention her mother came up with or a design her father thought of on the whim. A universal translation spell was one of the latest projects in the Hamasaki household, another being a Japanese style invisibility cloak that didn't need an invisibility charm. This time around on her walk home, she didn't hear the distant sounds of her parents at work. That wasn't strange either — Hiro and Connie Hamasaki weren't always glued to their projects. Sometimes when Carmen returned home, one of them would be pouring tea and the other would be arranging flowers.

Even if Carmen wasn't a stranger to the strange, that didn't mean she was immune. When she slid the door open, she didn't expect to see her mother sitting in the corner, bright smile gone from her face and replaced with a pained look while she clutched her stomach. Blood seeped through the fabric of her orange blouse while her father frantically ran around the main room, which was in shambles. The relaxed smile fell from Carmen's face — what happened while she was gone? All she could see was blood blood blood, her own mother's blood starting to drip onto the tatami floor.

Once Hiro caught sight of Carmen from the corner of his eye, he took a step toeards her hesitantly, as if his presence would hurt her. Instead, he swiped a small origami crane off an oddly untouched chair. Two long strides later and the crane was now in Carmen's hand, and he was saying words that Carmen couldn't process as she stared at her mother.

"Karumen," he exhaled shakily, obviously exasperated. It took a lot for Carmen to break her eye contact with her mother's blood and look up at Hiro. Her eyes started to well up in tears — she didn't know why, and she felt like a fool for her first reaction to be crying out of all things. Carmen wanted desperately to run to her mother's side, but she was frozen, as if ice kept her trapped where she stood. It hadn't even been a few minutes and Carmen found herself so overwhelmed, too overwhelmed.

Hiro saw the gears in Carmen's head starting to overheat and malfunction. He took Carmen into his arms, resting his chin on top of her head — this embrace was the same warm one she knew and grew up with all her life. The way he soothingly stroked her hair to the way he instinctively hummed a familiar lullaby made Carmen calm down slightly and feel like she was five again. Carmen melted in his arms, letting her broomstick fall from her hand and to the ground with a thud. It didn't take very long for Hiro's shirt to become stained with Carmen's overwhelmed tears or for the silence to be replaced by her muffled sobs.