That was the first of Rika’s logs and set up the long tradition of taking photos as a way of saying ‘hi’. I wish it was that easy in real life. :)
Current IC time is: Sat May 25 10:28:39 2002 - Day
Roof — Eriol Gakuen
The roof of Eriol Gakuen main building is empty, save for the pipes and water tanks which have something to do with the school’s heating and water supply system. There isn’t much of anything else here, actually, save for the tall wire mesh fence, preventing any and all attempts at jumping to your death below. That leaves the view from the roof being it’s most interesting feature. From this vantage point, you san see as far as Meguro, and the skyscrapers of Ginza glitter in the distance.
Eileen
Green silk and long loose waves of soft, black hair, wireframe glasses with small round lenses, and a broad, loose wrap of light purple silk which encompasses her waist immediately set this person apart from the rest of the crowd. The luxurious hair flows loosely into a simple plum-hued ribbon which marks the beginning of an impressively thick braided ponytail which falls heavily to touch the floor. The green silk is part of a simple yet elegant variation of a Chinese frog-buttoned shirt, with piping along the edges, and thick bands of purple at the cuffs. The shirt extends far past the waist, almost to her ankles, but leaves the sides open past the waist, exposing baggy cream-toned pants which flow into dark, ornately tooled leather boots. The girl wearing this, for it’s rather simple to deduce with all the silk, appears to be cosplaying as Citan from Xenogears. From the way she carries herself though, she’s nowhere near as confident and laid back, shy seems to scream from her very body language. Her features are another unusual feature. They’re caucasian, with a definite English cast to the features.
Rika
This girl fits the textbook definition of ‘cute redhead’, and while she’s unmistakably asian, her relatively pale skin and dark green eyes, coupled with flaming red hair cut in a pageboy style make it easy to forget about it, especially since there’s no sign of hair dye. Overally, she resembles a fox - lithe and slim, and generally small, since she’s rather short.
She is dressed in the Eriol Gakuen girl’s uniform - white jacket with blue sailor flap and cuffs, not to mention the tacky crown-shaped medal, white and blue short skirt and the long blue stockings with regulation white shoes. She looks unsurprisingly feminine and attractive in this attire, which was probably the initial idea. She’s dragging around a thick cloth bookbag, and a microscopic Minolta Dimage X digital camera is hanging on her neck on a chain.
Eileen is standing next to the rail on the roof, arms folded on top of the horizontal metal bar, just looking out at the city. At her side on the ground is a large gym bag, with an angel’s head, chest, and arms sticking out of the opening. Curious thing that. Her angel has hair that’s so electrified it’s blonde, and it’s impossible to tell what color is underneath it. And upon the arms of her angel are large red cylinders, the size, and probably weight of D-cell batteries. Eileen herself is also garbed unusually, with long black flowing hair that goes into a braid just past her shoulders. The braid extends all the way down to the ground, swaying like an unwound grandfather clock’s pendulum in the breeze. Her green silk outfit ripples smoothly as the air slips around her as she just stands there. It’s also very clear she’s a gaijin. Of English ancestry by the look of her. She’s also pretty, but in an androgynous sort of way. She doesn’t appear to be paying attention to anything. She’s daydreaming.
Rika peeks onto the roof out of the door, opened just a tiny crack, one curious eye blinking from the relative darkness of the stairs. Then another one. Then both. Then the head pops out through the door, looking around, but instead of the girl, the next thing to show up is the small silvery digital camera, snapping several pictures with a tiny click. Moments later, Rika slides out onto the roof and shoots several more frames, featuring Eileen prominently, before proceeding towards the rail, quietly like a ghost.
Eileen appears completely oblivious to the girl sneaking up on her, snapping pics. Eileen probably gives plenty of opportunity to get these shots looking good. She doesn’t move much, shifting her weight to her other leg as the leg bearing her weight gets a little tired, or idly scratching her hand with a single, well trimmed nail. Pensive is the quality that she exudes at the moment.
Rika isn’t sneaking per se. Rather, she always walks this way, so when she is finally close, she stands by the rail adjacent Eileen, and then abruptly sticks the hand with her camera out so as to get a decent face shot of Eileen from the front, bending the wire mesh fence forward slightly in the process. This is practically impossible to ignore, since to light up shadows, she turns the flash on, SNAP
Eileen jumps back a little, clasping her hands together in front of her chest as she does so. “…EEEEiiiiaaah!” comes her exclamation. She shakes her head, trying to get the spots out of her eyes apparently. “…waaah…” she says, much softer. “…ano…what did you do that for?” Then she blinks again, noticing it’s someone she hasn’t met before. . o O (Wow! This girl is pretty!) Eileen suppresses a little surge of jealousy, quickly realizing she’s in enough trouble already without having to look that good.
Rika smiles and raises the camera to her eyes to capture Eileen’s priceless facial expression while it’s still there. “Documenting your life makes implanting false memories much harder.” she responds matter of factly and tosses her bag to the floor with a muffled metallic ‘clang’. “Besides, the look on your face deserves to be seen by future generations.”
Eileen blushes a little, and apparently a little discomfited to learn that her face, and the look she had upon it which she hasn’t seen yet, might be seen by generations of people. “…a-ano…are you with the school paper…?” She lowers her hands, as she calms down from her initial startlement, then seems to remember herself, and gives a hasty bow, “…a-ano, gomen! patterson airin-desu.”
Rika chuckles, letting the camera fall down on it’s chain and says, “No, they keep saying my stories are sensationalist nonsense, so I’m not talking to them anymore. They can’t handle the Truth.” She makes a polite bow, “Maeki Rika desu.”
Eileen straightens up, ending the motion with a slight hop, and then smiles. “ano…maeki-san…the truth? …gomen…ano, what truth is it they can’t handle?” She pulls the unbound portion of her hair back into place carefully, while looking curious.
Rika tilts her head over to one side. She’d probably loom over instead, but Eileen’s taller. “Are you sure you want to know? Because when you do, there’s no way you can forget.” she answers strangely seriously.
Eileen’s eyes widen. “…nani? …ano, maeki-san…it’s that serious?” Eileen, taken aback by the seriousness of Rika’s reply, takes a few moments to think about this now that she’s been warned. She finally replies, “…ano…there’s been a lot of strangeness lately, so i guess another one can’t hurt…hai!” she says, raising her hand in the air for some odd reason as she makes her decision.
Rika turns around to look out onto the city. After a pause she says, “I can’t say I know the truth. I can only say I am convinced that a large portion of what we hear and see every day is a lie. That underlying this lie is the truth that the lies were made to conceal. That there is someone - or something - who would keep us ignorant and consent.” She glances over her shoulder at Eileen, “A lot of strangeness, but you were about to go ahead and forget it, weren’t you?”
Eileen’s attention seems riveted to Rika and her speech, her green-gray eyes following the redhead, then out to the city. “…ano…a large portion of it is a lie? …but why would someone lie to…oh! is there a conspiracy here too?” She blinks, and her voice, if possible, gets even quieter. “……in the u.s., there’s been talk of a conspiracy also…ano…something about black magic, and a place called area 51, and x-files……” She lowers her head to think a little, while Rika turns the conversation to the strangeness. “……ano…… iie…at least at the temple, it was too strange to forget… some strange man in a labcoat claimed he had invented a warplane that could be piloted by angels, and he was praying to be forgiven by the future generations…”
Rika turns back to Eileen and leans onto the wire mesh fence with her back. “Which angels? The ones sent by the God Almighty?” she asks with geniune curiosity in her voice. Apparently, the idea of planes which could be piloted by either the dolls or the spirits does not strike her as weird at all.
Eileen blinks once. Now this idea strikes her as weird. “…ano…not the religious figures.” She tilts her head to one side, and some of her loose hair spills like a silk curtain in response to the motion. “…demo…the ones we use in angelic layer are the ones i mean, maeki-san.”
Rika glances at the angel sticking out of Eileen’s bag. “Interesting.” she comments. “I knew there was something else to that game.” she adds after a pause and quickly snaps a picture of Sentaku sitting in the gym bag.
Eileen says softly, “…ano…i don’t think there really is…he was saying something about the government trying to get his technology, but he said he kicked them out… i guess it was for a new addition to the game, kind of like that holographic thing they introduced last season…” She watches Rika snap a pic, but doesn’t look at what Rika’s snapping a pic of. “…ano…that appears to be a nice camera, maeki-san…”
Rika comments, “Do you know for sure that he was telling you all of it? I’m half inclined to think someone actually planned the whole thing to suck people’s souls out of them. That, at least, sounds like a good idea.” She smiles to Eileen and snaps another picture of her, just in case. “Ofcourse it is. I need to be sure of what I see.”
Eileen blinks once more as the picture is taken. “…ano, he seemed sincere about everything, and very sad…demo…but suck people’s souls out…? i don’t know, maeki-san…it seems a little far off…” She pauses, and then considers something, then says, “…a-ano…um…would you like to take a picture of me posing as citan?” She begins checking to make sure her hair is in place again.
Rika grins, “I’ll just have to find out by myself, won’t I?” She bends down to open her bookbag and digging deep inside, with metallic clanking indicating that whatever she keeps in there, it’s not books, produces another, bigger and more expensive-looking camera - something professional, no doubt. “Tell me, Patterson-san, do you cosplay often?” she says as she presses the shutter button and the camera goes off in a series of shots.
Eileen begins with a few contemplative poses, something Citan is most easily known for, then gradually builds it up into a sort of floor dance incorporating body positioning reminicent of the video game character’s flowy martial arts moves. As she does, she says, “…ano, i cosplay whenever i can. the only time i think i won’t is when school starts up again.” (And even then, that’s almost cosplaying)
Rika keeps pressing the button and shifting angles, looking for a better shot, and comments half-heartedly, “You look convincing. What if you’re really Citan, somehow reborn in a girl’s body?” Can she be serious? Possibly.
Eileen giggles a little, taking out a blunt, plastic sword from her gym bag. “…arigato, maeki-san! …ano…that would be really cool!” She pauses, then adds as she goes through the sword motions, “…ano…but weird.” She winds down into a set involving rather bishonen poses, then finally stops, as if she’d run out of ideas for poses.
Rika continues shooting through, making good use of the flash and the morning sun. As Eileen stops, she stops as well, “…or you could be the result of some twisted plan to reenact Xenogears to create Deus through implanting people with the characters…”
Eileen blinks twice. “…ano…” she takes a few breaths, definitely less winded than your average teenager would be from that much spirited exertion, but still a little tired. “…h-hai, i guess i could…demo…i don’t know of any plan like that…”
Rika grins, letting the camera rest a little bit. “Ofcourse you don’t! Otherwise it wouldn’t work.”
Eileen nods twice, conceeding to the wisdom of this. “…ano…that’s probably true. huh…i didn’t think of it like that before, maeki-san…that’s kind of scary!”
Rika snickers, “Which is why people tend to avoid thinking about such things.”
Eileen nods softly, “…ano…as long as there are no soylent factories…” she blinks then hastily adds as she waves her hands in the air in between them. “….a-ano…onegai, please don’t think too much on that…at least out loud…i got sick the last time i thought deeply about that.”
Rika spends most of her time thinking about scary things, to be honest, but she refrains from saying that. “When we stop questioning things we stop looking for the truth. Which is why I keep taking pictures. They let me question even my own memory.” she says seriously.
Eileen considers this a little more, and asks politely, “…ano…but what if someone tampers with your camera and your memory at the same time…?”
Rika shrugs, “It’s beyond human power to alter both within reasonable time. But if I run across something which can do that, they will start with making me someone who doesn’t care.” As she pauses, an annoying beeping sound emits from her bookbag, and she glances inside, where a light blinks. “And the lunch break is about to be over too. Meep!” she says, tossing her camera rather carelessly into the bag and hefting it on her shoulder. It must weigh about a quarter of her own weight, that’s for sure. “I’ll make some prints in a few days. Ja! Don’t be late for your class!” she adds and starts quickly walking to the door.
Eileen giggles. “…ano…it’s a saturday, maeki-san…i don’t have class today, though i did have some gymnastics practice earlier today…” She waves to the departing girl though, blushing a little again at the mention of prints…oh well, at least it won’t be on the school paper. Once again, she’s struck by how cute Rika is. Now why don’t girls like her have the sorts of relationship problems she suddenly seems to have?
Rika says, “It might be an empty saturday for you, but I have clubs! Jaa!” and disappears behind the door.
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