What's Left Unseen
Third Testimonial 
by Ina-chan
First Posted Online:  November 16, 2003
History: Ina-chan's first experimental attempt on using POV testimonials to tell a story using FURUBA characters 

                I once read about Pygmalion in school.  It's a Greek myth about this this man, who found so many faults in women that he ended up hating them. So he created a sculpture of what he believed to be the ideal woman made of ivory. He then ending up falling in love withhis inanimate creation. When I read it, the first thing that crossed my mind was thinking how stupid it was. I know it's just a story... needless to say, a man falling in love with a statue he created and a goddess granting his wish to turn this statue of stone into a human being at the man's convinience, and they live happily ever after... it's like an anime looser fanboy's ultimate fantasy. It's just so stupid.

                 Gure-nii laughed when I told him what I thought.  He then said that Pygmalion was not just a fanboy comedy. Pygmalion's plight was really a human tragedy. With love, you create an ideal in your head. Sometimes, people striving desperately for that fantasy that they'reblinded by it to notice too late what's really happening in reality.  

                I can empathize with that, I suppose...  

                Falling in love with the ideal you created... it happens a lot, even when you don't realize it.  

                That's why I wasn’t surprised when that particular incident happened. It was inevitable.

                Putting that aside, I know Kagura a lot better than most people. In many ways, living and growing up together... you can say that Kagura was somewhat the closest person to a sister to me. I know that despite her violent tendencies when she gets overly enthusiastic,Kagura has a very good heart. Ever since we were children, Kagura had taken the habit of caring for strays… the injured and the unwanted.  

                So it was pretty much predictable that Kagura would harbour unconditional affection for the cat. It was not a secret that she had a fondness for Akito’s favourite broken toy as well. No one else expressed as much happiness as Haru when he first brought news that the cat and the mouse seemed ot be getting along in Gure-nii's house. Thanks to  Honda Tooru, of course. But... to tell you the truth,Tooru-san's appearance in the picture only delayed and complicated what would happen as the inevitable. It was clear to everyone that both Yuki and Kyou had fallen hard for her. In a way, it was somewhat distressing to see how desperately Kagura tried to hold on to Kyou back then...

                 Someone once told me that love is patient and kind...  never envious, never blind... never selfish or holds a grudge...

                 If that was really the case... then it was understandable why Kagura failed the first time around.  As generous and good-hearted Kagura can be... her love can also be… suffocating. The way she used to convey her feelings can become too intense and too possessive, driving the object of her affection away. That's exactly what the cat did... He finally got the back bone to state it out loud. Needless to say,she was devastated... though, Kagura being Kagura, she eventually got over it. She was free from that hopeless obsession.

                 As cruel as it is to say this... in some ways... his rejection actually did her a lot of good.

                 And because her energy wasn't being single-mindedly focused on chasing Kyou, she was forced to focus on something else. She found several new passions, one of them is working with kids. That's why she ended up as a teacher. It's kind of funny, isn't it? Kagura as a teacher, that is. Gure-nii and the boys used to tease her that the future of the nation is in danger if the people responsible for molding the minds of the youth was Kagura... nonetheless, Kagura has proven that she is a very competent teacher, on top of being relatively well-liked by most of her  students.

                Well... there are some things about Kagura that haven't changed. Even though she has toned down from how she used to be when we were teen-agers... her overenthusiasm does manage to come out in the open once in a blue moon. While many of her admirers had come to accept it as one of her quirks, there are still a handful of people who feel overwhelmed and intimidated by her. Of course, that  certain episode didn't help make matters any simpler. I suppose we were lucky that it didn't reach the point wherein legal action had to be taken.

                 Akito would definitely have had a ball if it came to that...

                 Kagura didn't blame anyone. And vehemently insisted not to blame Yuki about it either. 'He's already blaming himself enough over something he's not even responsible for,' she said. She's right of course. Maybe I was just used to seeing Yuki angst over the most trivial things or maybe it's  just personal bias in my part, since I never got along with that damned Rat for as long as I can remember... but somehow, I can't feel any sympathy for him over it. Any person in his right mind would have left it alone. But he had to needlessly get himself involved.

                 In a way... it was indirectly his fault this whole fiasco happened. His very actions to "make right" that certain episode  inevitably led to that particular incident.

                 I just feel sorry that Tooru-san had to endure the consequences of  both their actions.

                 Then again... to be fair... I suppose all of us played a part with this. I'm just as responsible as Yuki with hurting Tooru-san for not saying anything right from the beginning when I first realized it.  I have to admit that my loyalties were torn. Though, I never considered myself truly close to either Kagura or Tooru-san... they are both... important... to me.  Maybe I was being hopeful like everyone else, putting blind faith in that perfect "love" between Yuki and Tooru will pull them through any given situation. Maybe I just didn't want to be the one to break that spell. Maybe I didn't want to believe what I was seeing either... I mean, after all... neither Kagura nor Yuki nor Tooru were able to see what was happening to themselves.

                 Hmph. I'm starting to sound like Haru and his illogical babbling...

                 Like I mentioned earlier, that particular incident was inevitable. I saw it taking shape, ironically enough, through Kagura's other found passion. While a picture says a thousand words... watching the brush strokes of a simple painting as it takes shape would sometimes reveal the painter's soul.

                 Yes, you heard it right. Painting.

                 It was actually a student of hers who got her interested in it to the point that she started taking a few art courses in college. To tell you the truth, Kagura was actually very good. Who knows how far she would have gone by now if she discovered and pursued her hiddentalent back then instead of indulging in her hopeless "hunting" hobby.

                 It was that session when I first realized it...

/"THAT'S your emergency?!?!?"/

/But I really really really need your help, Yun-chan~~~!"/

                It was four in the morning, and I was genuinely annoyed as well.

 /"I don't know what else to do! I was so busy checking my students' essays the past couple of days that I didn't realize that this sketch is due!"/

/"Why do you need to use ME as your model. Doesn't the college have sessions with professional models after school hours. And Haru or Kyou would have come to help you just the same."/

                Being woken from sleep by the whining of inconsiderate cousins.

 /"Be~~~~cause, Takeda-sensei likes you! She's a tough grader, and I really need all the points I could get to win her good side. And for some strange reason, all my pieces that use you as a model seem to earn the highest marks!"/

/"You woke me up at three in the morning, five hours from an important exam, so you can impress your painting class teacher..."/

                This was one of those extremely rare occasions that I actually sympathized with the Rat. It's the height of midterms season...and prior to their argument, I just managed to finally fall asleep too after a restless cramming session-induced  insomnia. By that time, I was burying my head under the pillow, silently wallowing to why I agreed to being Kagura's roommate when she decided to get a place of her own, that I almost didn't catch what happened next...

/"Besides, you don't really have to do anything. All you have to do is sit over there by the couch and look pretty and you can even doze off to catch some z's while I sketch you...indernndd... and you wouldn't even know I'm here."/

 /"What?"/

 /"What what?"/

 /"I didn't catch what you said on the last part."/

 /"You wouldn't even know I'm here."/

 /"No, before that."/

 /"Oh... you mean sketching you... indernnnd?"/

 /"In what?"/

/"......... I need to sketch you... in... the... uh... nude."/

/".........!!!"/

                .........!!!

/"Goodbye."/  

/"Oh come on! It's not like I haven't seen it before. We used to take baths together..."/

/"Kagura, I was four years old... and I am not going to pose nude to impress your teacher. If you excuse me, I have an exam to take in less than 4 hours..."/

/"Don't be so selfish!"/

/"I'M selfish!?!"/

/"If you're afraid that Tooru-kun will get the wrong idea, Isuzu is here to..."/

                As much as there are things about Kagura that matured all these years, there are still certain things about her that will probably never change. At that point, I instinctively buried myself under my covers and willed myself to turn invisible just in case Kagura comes to my room to force me to play chaperone.

/"Will you stop it? Don't pull Tooru or Rin or anybody else because of your irresponsibility. You created this problem, you deal with it."/

/"Yun-chan, you liar~~~~! You're the one who said to come to you if I needed help on anything. And when I do need help, you turn around and abandon me~~~!"/

/"......you... are something else..."/

                And there are some things about men, in general, that will probably never change either.

/"So you're doing it?"/

/"The clothes stay on."/

/"But..."/

/"The clothes stay on, take it or leave it."/

/"Mou! Yun-chan is no fun at all!"/

                They didn't say anything  after that exchange.... or make much noise for that matter. Mind you, at that time, I still didn't suspect anything. Neither of them has done anything to make anyone suspicious.  But being jarred awake, and my insomnia returning in full force, I suppose I started to feel bored just lying in bed to stare at the ceiling for more than an hour. So I decided to go and grab something warm to drink.  When I passed them by the living room, that's when I saw it for the first time. Mind you, there was nothing suspicious about that scene as well. Yuki, as expected, had fallen asleep on his seat, as Kagura sat across him... watching him sleep, as her fingers stroked across an over-sized sketch pad resting casually on her lap. I've seen Kagura seriously at work before. That fierce and determined expression on her face as she fell into deep concentration.  She didn't even  bother looking away when I tried to make my presence known. When she's in that mind state, it was as impossible to sway her attention as trying to separate her from Kyou, years back.

                 Like I said, there was nothing suspicious about the scene... but for some strange reason... but suddenly... when I saw them... I felt... guilty. It felt as if I was some kind of perverted vouyer watching something very intimate.

                 I didn't know what it was. Maybe it was the way her fingers moved over the paper. How she seemed to caress each line as her strokes slowly revealed his form on its blank page. Maybe it was the way she looked at him. The intensity in her eyes as they followed every contour and shadow of his shape. I don't know what it was... but there was something in the air between them, that brought about a heavy uncomfortable feeling within me.

                 It wasn't until much later that I gave in to my curious urge to look through Kagura's collection of sketches. Mind you... they were all wonderful likenesses of her various subjects. Inanimate models and portraits of friends and families alike. While that scene in the living room was the first time I saw it... it was looking through Kagura's sketches that I first realized it. And I also understood the reason why Takada-sensei always gave her high marks on her work that involved Yuki as her model. And I can assure you that Takada-sensei liking Yuki had nothing to do with it.

                 Comparing her drawings that had her other models to the ones that had Yuki in it... 

                 I think I've come to understand what Gure-nii meant when he said that Pygmalion was really a human tragedy.

End of Third Testimonial
Return to 2nd Testimonial  
Continued on 4th Testimonial 

AUTHOR’S SQUAWK:

                This has got to be the most difficult chapter I've written in ages. There's so little written about Rin, but I wanted to play with her character. Most particularly in the recent Rin chapters where we see a softer side of Rin. I hope I captured that. It was very difficult for me as well, because of all the characters in the series, it's probably Rin whom I don't seem to get a long the most. Even though her true personality is quite endearing, there's still something about her that repels me. Anywayz... next chapter is alternating back to Yuki's side of the story through Haru. ^_^. 

Ja!
Ina-chan