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| Mansairaku and Minamoto no Hikaru (Otogi Zoshi 2004) |
Mansairaku watched as the short-haired girl skipping along the pavement, the hot summer sun made her sweating more than she normally would.
A drop of sweat fell on her left eyebrow; still thick as a summer bamboo bush as he remembered it. Casually, she brushed the sweat away and continued walking, skipping along the pathway.
How come a girl skip so lively in such a hot summer day, Mansairaku wouldn’t understand; not that his body was particularly disturbed by the extreme heat of this particular summer. After all, since his tenure as Tenkai, he hadn’t felt extreme cold or extreme heat for centuries now, hence his indifference in donning the black coat since the turn of the century. He chose the coat more of from the practicality viewpoint, for it obscured him from the curious eyes of passer-by, though indeed there were women - and men - that would glance at him every now and then, mostly admiring his look, though some of them would also retreat after sensing his immense loneliness.
Anyway. Coming back to the girl.
She still had that joie de vivre that made him attracted to her a thousand years ago. Oh, he knew she had that innate power that would rival his, the exact power he needed to bring down the old regime. He had to admit that the first time he saw her as Minamoto no Raikō bowing down in front of his Abe no Seimei alter-ego, he thought that she was just a pretty boy who received the Universe’s random gift of immense spiritual power. That was why he sent her across Honshu to collect the magatama stones. The first time he saw her playing the shakuhachi on the rotten roof of Rashomon, he still didn't know that this "Hikaru-dono" was the same person as the pretty boy Minamoto no Raikō. Rather, that she was impersonating her bed-ridden brother and took over his mission to find the magatama stones. Only when Mansairaku met Hikaru again in Chinzei that he knew she was a girl dressed up as a boy; a gorgeous girl at that. Only on that day he realised that he had fallen in love with her. Most likely, he surrendered his heart to her back then in Heian-kyō, the day his body and mind danced together with her music. From then on, he decided to protect her, for he was captivated by her magic. For he knew, without her, his life would be meaningless.
Now, trailing the girl, he knew that – oblivious to the passage of time – the magic remained the same. He couldn’t pinpoint whether he was disappointed or happy that she still held his heart captive that way... and staring at her back as he surreptitiously followed her since she left her school gate didn’t give him the answer he longed for.
At last, in front of a two-storey house, the girl stopped skipping. Mansairaku knew she lived there; the ancient name on the gate declared as such.
The Minamoto Manor.
Minamoto no Hikaru’s house.
The ancient name that stubbornly cling to his heart for more than a thousand years.
The girl now entered the house, disappearing from his sight.
Never mind that. He knew where she slept and what her normal routines were. Since he learned of her existence a little more than a year ago, he’d been spying on her. “Keeping her safe” was his sincere intention, but had her friends known about it, they would call it “stalking”.
And perhaps he was stalking her. He could imagine, nay, clearly saw her sleeping in her bed, without the long black tresses he had longed to touch. Just that mere imagination would violently drag him back to the past, to the moments when she was his, when she let him touch her shoulder for the first time without even flinching – a sign that she trusted him the moment she saw him. Oh yes, he could clearly see that evening in Chinzei when she leaned on his shoulder, that afternoon when she hugged him in tears on top of the Rashomon...and that time when their bodies were intertwined as one, before she found out who he was...
Then, as per usual, he would snap out of it and disappear from the neighbourhood. Those memories were too painful to replay. He could face those replays many times all those hundreds of years ago, in the ancient times, when he knew he had to endure living while she remained in Heaven, un-incarnated due to her purity, while he had to live an almost eternal life on Earth as a consequence of his sins. In those days, when those ancient memories flooded him, be it as the monk Akashi Kakuichi, the ‘traitor’ Akechi Mitsuhide or the monk-advisor Tenkai, he could take those memories. He actually welcomed them, for he considered his union with Hikaru as sacred. A sacred union he would devote his life for, had he received a second chance.
But now, with the girl almost within his reach, he couldn’t stand those memories. If he allow those memories to take over his senses, he would hug her and never let her go. Thus, he turned away and left, entering the white refuge he’d been so accustomed to taking.
-xxx-
Mansairaku could clearly remember when he was able to enter this white refuge of his. It was like a bubble in time when mere hours there seemed to equate a decade on Earth. It was the day the atomic bomb blasted Hiroshima. He was already in despair back then, unable to stop the Japanese government from instigating violence and hence plunging the entire country into another world war. When Hiroshima was on fire, Mansairaku felt like his body was on fire too. From his room in a humble house outside Tokyo, so far away from Hiroshima, he could see that city on fire. He cried so loud that his body trembled. He remembered the time he cried that much; it was the day Minamoto no Hikaru sacrificed herself.
Then, suddenly he felt his body sucked into a white void. Strangely, the white refuge was very peaceful, with the peace of a mother’s womb he’d already forgotten. Mansairaku almost lost his will to live and was ready to surrender himself into the white refuge, but then he remembered the promise he made to himself when Hikaru died: never again he would fail to protect Japan. Hence, he willed himself to leave the refuge. He literally arrived back in the human plane moments after the second bomb destroyed Nagasaki. Mansairaku’s knees buckled and he crumbled again, crying like a wounded animal for what seemed to be hours.
He did pick himself up again and, after composing himself, joined normal human beings in rescuing the bomb victims and rebuilding Japan. Never he felt that exhausted before, but he kept going until one day his fatigue took him by accident back to the white refuge. That time though, he was able to understand the nature of the white refuge. It was a bubble in time that the Universe created for him, to be his other-wordly home. Soon, he was able to traverse between planes, appearing in the human plane whenever he was needed, or whenever he was curious with how the world outside the refuge evolved.
Since Japan had never been in a dire situation after World War 2, Mansairaku felt that his role in protecting the country – and particularly the capital – decreasing over time. He would still appear in Tokyo or other parts of Japan as he wished, but it was driven mostly out of curiosity than need.
That driver changed a little over a year ago, when he suddenly heard the laughter of the girl, the woman he’d been longing for. Mansairaku was meditating inside his refuge when the voice suddenly burst his peaceful bubble, throwing him out of his inner equilibrium. He gasped and opened his eyes, suddenly finding himself under a blooming sakura tree, about 20 meters away from the Shinobazu Pond in Ueno.
Ueno. Out of many towns in Tokyo, Ueno was the town he loved the most due to its resemblance to Kyoto. That day, he found another reason to love that town more.
For out of the blue, along the pathway by the Shinobazu Pond, he saw Minamoto no Hikaru, sauntering leisurely alongside a tall man he knew to be Minamoto no Raikō. It took every ounce of his discipline not to run after Hikaru and hug her on the spot. This Hikaru was about the same age as the Heian Hikaru, with the same liveliness, even more so now that the aristocratic decorum was no longer observed in this era. Her hair was very short, though, a fact that hit Mansairaku hard, for he loved that long jet-black hair of hers. But most notably disturbing was her manner of clothing.
Mansairaku knew girls in this era loved short skirts, but never he would imagine seeing Hikaru in that very short skirt. He felt like his eyes almost left his sockets when he saw how white her legs were, how casual she was when taking large strides, giving no attempts whatsoever to hide her beautiful legs. It was too disturbing that Mansairaku had to turn away for a few moments until he could recollect himself. Yet, when he did finally glance again at Hikaru, he regretted it immediately, for he was once again washed with longing, such an intense longing that he had to jab his fingernails into his palms to bring himself a dose of awareness.
The longing was too intense, and he knew he had to just transport out of that place, yet he couldn’t peel his eyes off her.
Ever since, his sixth sense seemed to have tuned directly into Hikaru’s frequency. Every time she experienced elevated emotions, Mansairaku felt it immensely as well. For the first few days, he struggled on how to cut off his emotions, because he felt as if he was on the brink of madness, trying to contain it. Yet, as days gone by, he was able to finally reached his equilibrium. He still longer for her, but he was able to shove those feelings inside a dark corner in his heart. The very place he stored all his memories of Minamoto no Hikaru.
Yet, this very act of purposely numbing his feelings was the reason he couldn’t save Hikaru’s brother, Minamoto no Raikō, when the latter was accidentally dragged into the time rift. Well, to his defence, he wasn't tuned in with Raikō (to be fair, Raikō-dono would punch him flat out if he knew what he did in the past, even though he Mansairaku would find it super easy to deflect the punch). Hence, although he knew Raikō was investigating some supranatural things in Tokyo, he wasn’t aware that Hikaru’s brother was dangerously too close to encountering a time rift. When the rift did open, neither Hikaru nor Mansairaku was there to rescue Raikō from getting sucked into the rift. Only when a few nights later he sensed Hikaru’s heightened anguish that even his mental block couldn’t filter out that Mansairaku realised something was amiss.
Mansairaku couldn’t remember how he managed to reign himself from entering Hikaru’s room that night, uninvited, when Hikaru finally realised that her brother had been missing in action. He shed silent tears that night watching her sobbing pitifully, as a part of his heart burned with jealousy upon seeing two men he recognised as Watanabe no Tsuna and Usui no Sadamitsu desperately trying to comfort ‘Hikaru-chan’.
Ever since, he watched over Hikaru almost like her faraway shadow. He wasn’t always there physically because people – notably Hikaru herself – would notice, but he always opened up his senses to be in tune with Hikaru’s sense. Mansairaku knew the time rift that swallowed Raikō wasn’t a coincidental event, and should the rift open up again, he certainly didn’t want to have Hikaru sucked into it.
-xxx-
Alas, it seems the girl had a knack of flirting with danger, just like her old Heian self. That night, Mansairaku watched anxiously as Hikaru fidgeting nearby the old Manseibashi Station. The time rift will open again, and the ghost train that carried Raikō would appear soon. If not stopped, that girl would jump into the train and got sucked into the time rift. Thus, when, aided by Tsuna, Hikaru climbed over the wired fence to enter the restricted facility and a police vehicle spotted them, Mansairaku half hoped that the girl would be caught, just so that she didn’t approach the old platform.
Yet, the girl was as resourceful as her Heian self, and Tsuna was as self-sacrificing as his Heian self. In dismay, Mansairaku watched as Hikaru effortlessly climbed over and dropped on the other side of the wired fence; Tsuna running away, chased by the two policemen. Then, as Mansairaku feared, the time rift opened and the ghost train appeared. As Hikaru ran towards the platform, Mansairaku knew he had to finally show himself. He had been wanting to do just that since he saw her for the first time in Ueno, but he knew if he do that, there was never going back.
-xxx-
“Nii-san?” Hikaru felt like she saw a ghost when the old 73-series train halted to a stop on the old, abandoned platform. Seeing a very familiar, but lonely, figure inside that train, she ran towards that particular compartment.
“Nii-san, look at me here!” Hikaru almost reached the compartment door when a tall, magenta-haired stranger stopped her.
“Hikaru...right? Go back. You shouldn’t be here.” The stranger held his hand in front of her, effectively blocking her entrance. “Don’t get into the train.”
Despite her eyes widened in surprise upon seeing a stranger obstructing her path, Hikaru still ran towards the train which started to move. “Nii-san!”
Yet, the stranger still blocked her way.
“The world is wavering… and it’s about to disappear,” said the stranger sadly yet coldly, his hand still barricading the entrance. His action robbed Hikaru the few seconds she needed to reach her brother, for in that few seconds, the train moved away. Surprised that a stranger dared to prevent her reunion with her brother, Hikaru didn’t notice how the stranger’s fingers curved in such a way, as if he wanted to touch her longingly. Instead, she shoved his hand away and ran to chase the train. Yet, it was too late, for the train had disappeared again as the girl stumbled and fell on the platform.
When she picked herself up again, she observed in wonder how the old track that carried the 73-series train glowed like a fluorescence. Later, she also realised that the tall, magenta-haired, black-coat stranger had also disappeared from the platform.
As Hikaru watched the track’s glow subsided, she felt a pang of longing in her heart that had nothing to do with her brother’s missing. Absentmindedly, she touched her own arms that the stranger accidently brushed.
It felt like a moment when a gentle, sensitive person gently tapped on her shoulder, a long, long time ago…
-FIN?-
Author’s note:
This fan-fiction is difficult to understand for those who haven’t seen Otogi Zoshi (2004-2005). For those who have, they might hate or love Mansairaku (万歳楽). I love and hate him at the same time, but as the story moved from the Heian chapter to the Tokyo chapter, I found myself wishing he and Hikaru got together in the end. I won’t spoil the end of story now here, but you can watch the episodes here.
By the way, Mansairaku's name in Kanji is 万歳楽. It means "Ten thousand years of comfort" or "Ten thousand years of ease", although 楽 can also mean 'music' (but it's read as 'gaku', not 'raku'). Personally, because one of Mansairaku's occupations during the Heian era was a dancer, I would prefer to translate his name as "Ten thousand years of music", for it also befits his love for Hikaru's music.
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