Post #1823702 in Our Second Selves, a roleplay on RPG

It was morning, mid-morning, to be precise, and Evande had been up the whole of the night, well, she had been up ever since she’d woken up to thinking that the last two days of her life might have been nothing more than a crazy dream of hers. . . . Since then, she had been wide-awake, sketching away like a mad woman for hours on end, not stopping at all. She had fervently continued her work, constantly changing pencils, or quickly using the tips of her fingers to properly smudge at the picture; making certain she captured the unknown image perfectly on the paper before her. Even as her pencils traversed the sheet of paper, Evande still hadn’t the slightest idea what it was she was drawing exactly, only knowing from an otherworldly, unnatural feeling that the final product was strongly connected to Nikolas.

Even seeing the image being born before her eyes wasn’t enough to jar her mind and to force the dormant memories from their slumber, the connection the picture had to Nikolas remained a mystery, the knowledge to even draw it was coming from an unknown place in her heart. Strange as that sounded, it was the only explanation she had. Well, maybe it didn’t sound so strange given the day’s preceding events. . . . Heaven’s sake even, she had another person’s memories in her skull, and also seemed to be recalling past lives all her own. So, not knowing where the information came from that allowed her to recreate the picture before her wasn’t so bizarre. It was just another oddity to chalk up onto the ever-growing list.

Evande had remained at that task until daybreak, until the first rays of the sun began to peek into her dwelling. Having one hit her right in the face was enough to break her from the trance she seemed to be under while sketching so quietly. Upon realizing it was morning, she consciously looked down upon what it was she had produced in black and white pencil . . . and didn’t know what to make of it. It was a person, definitely Nikolas—something in her gut told her as much. But . . . that’s all she knew still. Nothing came to her, no story behind it or anything. After staring at it for some random increment of time, Evande relented to her perplexity with a quiet sigh, and set the sketchpad down on the armrest of her couch before she ascended to her feet and stretched her tense muscles out.

The otaku was quiet, simply standing there after letting her arms fall back to her sides, staring blankly at the wall in front of her. She thought about what it was she was going to do that day, and also about how different things were from just a mere twenty-four hours prior. The day before, she had been waking up, certain that she was going to be carrying out her weekend normal from then on, avoiding Nikolas and Ryu at all costs before. . . . Everything sort of spun out of her conscious control. Without a second thought, she had acted without thinking, helping Nikolas out with his broken wrist, and connected herself to him, and then willingly gave into the urge she had to help him.

And here she was now . . . a day later, and rather different. Unlike the previous day, she was content with the idea that she was now living, not fully knowing what the day had in store for her . . . and also knowing that she was connected to something real. From this idle thought, she went on ahead to separate her own bedspread from Nikolas’ black one, proceeding to then throw her alter’s blanket in her washing machine so she could return it to him clean and such. While that was happening, Evande went about cleaning up the broken plate that lay in front of her door from yesterday morning, along with her forgotten breakfast. She was careful about it, picking up the glass shards, last thing she felt like doing was leaving herself with a cut on her hand when she still had other things to do and worry about. Of course, during this time, she fed her little ninja-kitty his own breakfast, putting off making her own. After all of this, and putting the blanket into her dryer, Evande decided it was time for her to go ahead and take her shower for the day, officially get her life started and whatnot.

However . . . while the otaku was preparing for this, she also decided upon another course of action . . . it was the middle of the month, and it had been about four weeks since she had last gone ahead and done it. . . . Her hair color was starting to fade, and her blonde roots were beginning to show under the pink. It was time for her to go ahead and touch up the color in her hair, as she did routinely for the last five years of her life. Evande was very good about this sort of thing, it was compulsive, a habit she had formed ever since she had made that starling choice of hers. The need to make sure her hair remained pink was strong. Without a second thought, the otaku went ahead and carried out her normal routine of applying the dye, then letting it soak into her hair before washing the excess out in the shower well. Why should she have had any reason to do otherwise when it was the same thing she had done twelve times a year for the last five years? Well. . . .

The reasons Evande might have wanted to be a little bit more careful of herself this particular time came to be very apparent as she began to dry her hair out in one of her lighter colored towels . . . and a rather dark substance seemed to be appearing on it. As her brown eyes came to register what she was seeing, a numbingly powerful shock shot through Evande . . . a spark of surprise that was even stronger than anything she had faced the previous day with Nikolas and finding out his identity. Pushing her glasses up her nose, Evande simply held her towel out in front of her, a look of horror upon her features as she tried to understand just what it was she was looking at before her.

Blinking, mind blank, Evande’s breathing turned panic-driven as time ticked on. Finally a true reaction came from her in the form of her chewing on her bottom lip as a very evident look of anxiety expressed itself on her face, a shrill whine resounded from her throat as her grip on the towel tightened considerably. No, no, no, please tell me that I did not. . . . she mentally pleaded to the heavens to not let it be true. Holding a breath in her lungs, the otaku took tentative steps toward her condensation-covered mirror, and wiped some of the beaded water away from its reflective surface to see what exactly what it was she had done to herself, to her hair. . . .

And she froze as soon as she saw, brown eyes wide as her mouth was drawn into a thin line. . . . Shaking, Evande reach out and touched the mirror, the reflection of her now black hair. Her whole head; bangs and all, was now a deep shade of . . . ordinary black.

Holy hell, what had she done to herself this time?! “I-I . . . I must have bought the wrong hair dye. . . .” she murmured quietly to herself, retracting her hand from the mirror, letting it fall back to her side. Evande just stood there, looking at herself and her sodden black hair. It was quite a jolt to see herself with dark hair again after so long . . . after eight years. Is . . . is that how long it’s been since my hair turned blonde? A questioning look over took the woman’s features at this, Has it really been eight years? That meant . . . the last time she had hair so dark was when she was only eleven, when she was still a child. Way back when she had still taken after her mother; looking one-hundred percent Japanese. Yet, as she began to grow after that, her father’s blood began to take its hold of her, and quickly her hair lightened, becoming a fair shade of blonde in a manner which seemed unnatural.

It seemed like it happened too fast to be normal, but it had happened, simple as that. Following that incident, she began to grow up faster than her friends, and in Junior High school she was abandoned by them . . . till then, she had been living with her blonde hair for a year or so, thinking all was fine. But when she entered ninth grade, she had gone ahead and just dyed her hair pink to save herself some pain. That way she was just the otaku-freak, and not the otaku-freak with blonde hair.

Since those nearly forgotten days, Evande never once thought that she would see herself again with black hair. She never thought she would look . . . like a normal Japanese citizen ever again, not when she wasn’t one. “Eight . . . years.” Uncertainly, she looked back to her reflection—to her scared face, to a pale face surrounded by damp, dripping locks of black hair. The face in the mirror was that of a stranger’s it felt like, she didn’t feel like she was looking at herself anymore. Still, she knew she was, she knew that the woman in the mirror was her; even with the drastically altered hair color. The pink hair had sort of been her defining trait, something that was like a safety net for her in a weird way . . . even if she had wanted normalcy, the odd hair color was something she felt secure in.

But with black hair, with what really was a normal hair color, she didn’t really feel safe as she had before. Evande sighed a bit, shook her head and broke her gaze away from the mirror. It-it was just a hair color, a little mistake . . . that’s all it was. Black hair or pink, she was still herself—she had no reason to go and sound so shallow about her appearance, right? “It’s not like I should really care, I’m myself with or without pink hair. . . .”

After all, there were more important things happening around her now than a mistake made in her hair coloring. Nikolas, Ryu, the past lives, why it was a cycle of countless millennia was broken so suddenly. . . . All that stuff. Those matters were far more significant than what color the hair on her head was, that was something that could be remedied in a few hours, but what the matter of Nikolas, that was not so simple. Sighing to herself, Evande proceeded to get herself dressed; dark gray tee shirt and blue jeans, doing her best to move passed the dark pieces of hair that now draped about her form like a depressing curtain. Oh, if it were only so simple for her. . . .

It’s just my damn hair, there are other things to worry about Evande! she chided herself with a huff, straightening her clothing out. Pulling a ponytail holder out from one of the drawers in her sink, Evande pulled her hair to a gathering at the bottom of her skull, and bunched it together there so it would not get in her way for the remainder of the day. Really, her hair was the last thing she needed to worry about now. Even the matter of the H-rated memories that were stuck in her skull was more important than that.

Thinking about those, Evande’s pallor face went red and she groaned and planted the palm of her hand to her forehead. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. . . .” she chanted as she left her bathroom, heading for her dryer, which had since turned off, signaling that Nikolas’ bedspread was officially clean. Murmuring incoherent things to herself about those tainted memories of her alter’s, Evande took the black duvet out of the machine, noting the fact that it was still rather warm before she went ahead and folded it up into a neat square. Evande sighed to herself as she went ahead and moved to set it on her couch, “I hope Nikolas doesn’t mind his sheet smelling all flowery. . . .”

The newly rendered black-haired woman breathed out deeply, finding herself exasperated due to her hair. Yes, that was something that would be bothering her an awful lot. Rolling her eyes at herself, Evande turned on her heel and headed for her bedroom—she needed to return Nikolas’ bedspread, thank him, and also . . . there were some things of hers left there; her boots and coat. After she had been brought home in the middle of the night by her alter, her belongings had been left over in his apartment. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to him today,” she thought aloud, “But I know that there is a lot left for us to talk over.”

Without making another noise, the otaku slipped a pair of black flip-flop sandals on her feet, normally she would have just put her boots on, but she didn’t have those now did she? She treaded back on to her couch, lifting Nikolas’ duvet back up and into her grasp, before looking to her newly rendered picture . . . the one of Nikolas that she had no information regarding. Should I show that to him. . . ? she questioned, blinking. Well, there were some potential drawbacks to her going ahead and showing that to him. One; if the picture was an image of a life he didn’t want to remember, then she could make him upset. And that wasn’t something she felt like doing to him. . . .

Nikolas had been dealt some bad hands in some of his lifetimes obviously; Evande clearly remembered what she had been informed of yesterday. The life of his where he had been used as a test subject, it had been bad enough for him to try to fool himself and her into thinking it wasn’t so terrible. I called him out on it too, even with my naiveté, I know that even he gets that it wasn’t right, having to go through that. But, the picture, it wasn’t from that lifetime . . . of that much Evande could tell. She knew nothing about it, and if it was from that particular existence of Nikolas’ she felt that she’d be able to sense it in some manner. Standing there, quietly, she ruminated over it, before nodding to herself, deciding to take it with her.

With Nikolas’ sheets in her arms, sketchpad on top of it . . . Evande started for her door, opting not to take her keys with her, as she would only be across the hall and her door would remain unlocked. At least leaving her keys behind was a conscious choice on her part today. . . . Opening and shutting the door behind her, Evande found herself indolently yawning at random before she turned around, only to find herself seeing that . . . Nikolas and Ryu’s front door was wide open. Her mouth shut itself and she tilted her head to the side questioningly, now . . . what the hell?

Okay, so she knew those two men were strange . . . very strange given some of Nikolas’ memories she had stuck in her skull, but to go and leave your damn door open all night? Really? Face tinted pink, the otaku could only wonder what sort of scene she was going to walk into if she went inside willy-nilly. She had a feeling that whatever she was going to see, it was going to make her embarrassed as hell. There was no doubt in her mind about that; if there was one thing her alter seemed to be great at, it was making the blood rush to her face with Kurosawa’s second self. “Oh Lord,” she sighed, “I am so going to regret this in a few minutes. . . .” Evande mumbled to herself, trekking on ahead regardless of her worries and idle thoughts.

She slipped her sandals off in the entranceway of the apartment like a good little neighbor before proceeding into the main room, passed the kitchen area. And as soon as she did, the black-haired woman froze and made an uncomfortable noise when she happened to spot Nikolas and . . . Ryu, who apparently had also gone and dyed his hair an odd variation of colors. Guess I wasn’t the only one who had bad luck with the hair dye in the last few hours. . . . she sighed, face going red again. The two boys were sharing a yellow blanket it seemed, kind of sleeping under the kotatsu. Well, their apartment was uncomfortably cold Evande noted . . . but still. “I have the feeling these two are going to inadvertently mortify me to death.” Shaking her cranium back and forth with a ‘oh God, help me’ look on her face, Evande proceeded over to Nikolas, and stood over top the snoozing blonde for a moment, putting a rather blank expression over her face, she went ahead and knelt down next to him.

Evande had a sinking feeling he was going to be startled as hell when she woke him up, he probably wasn’t going to be expecting her of all people to be the one to rouse him. On top of that, he definitely wasn’t going to be expecting to find her with black hair all of a sudden when she just had pink hair the night before. Blinking, she moved one of her arms from around his blankets and proceeded to poke the boy’s side. Oh, she was going to be waking him up. . . . And honestly, a little part of her had this urge to not only wake him up, but also to embarrass him, for whatever the reason. Though it might have seemed a little unlike her, Evande couldn’t help the mischievous sentiment that was gnawing away at her core.

Ryu and Nikolas had caused her to have a nosebleed yesterday afternoon . . . even if they didn’t know it; she felt like she deserved some retribution for that. Yeah, she would be getting some payback for that one. . . . At some point, but, not quite now. However, when it seemed her poking efforts weren’t quite doing the trick to wake her alter up, Evande withdrew her hand, rolled her eyes and stooped over, deciding it might be best to try a vocal approach. A small smile on her face, she quietly began to speak, “Nikolas~ It’s time for you to wake up sleepyhead.” She whispered that right over his ear, purposefully sounding sweet and cheerful. It was funny to think about in a way . . . the fact that Nikolas was the one between the two of them with the majority of the experience and recollections regarding lifetimes.

Quickly the otaku sat back up, maintaining that smile on her face, sheets and sketchpad still on her lap.

Snippet #1823702

located in Japan, a part of Our Second Selves, one of the many universes on RPG.

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