One could safely assume it was an ordinary spring day at the CLAMP Academy. The sun shone, the birds sang, a breeze blew...
And three young boys dragged themselves into an ornate building, down a hall, up a flight of stairs, down another hall, and through a door. They flopped into chairs to rest for a moment. One produced a fan and, for once, proceeded to do something useful with it--flap it back and forth in an attempt to cool himself off.
"Kaichou," Suoh observed at length. "Are you aware we've staved off the sixth assassination and/or kidnapping attempt this week?"
"And that it's only Wednesday?" Akira added.
Nokoru nodded miserably. "I think the finishing touch was that misguided Sakurazukamori. They never get their targets wrong..."
A pause.
Akira looked at his watch. "Class in ten minutes." He stood and dragged himself to the door. "Whew..." He disappeared out the door.
Suoh, likewise, looked at his watch. "Ah..." he said. "I...have an exam in ten minutes."
Nokoru nodded. "I understand."
"If it weren't so important...half my grade...right..." Suoh left before he changed his mind.
Silence, then, but for the ticking of a clock.
Nokoru sat at the huge desk, then, only half reading the paper in front of him. He wondered, just for a brief moment, what it would be like to be an ordinary kid. No assassination or kidapping attempts, nothing to live up to, no shoes to fill. Just the ordinary worries of school. He sighed gustily, pushing that thought aside, and picked up the paper, settling in for a day of writing and stamping, stamping and writing.
"Imonoyama Nokoru?" a voice queried.
He looked up. "Yes? ACK!"
That last was because the voice came from a tiny pink-clad...fairy, complete with long blue hair and shimmering butterfly's wings. Her tiny, exquisite features carried something of a bored expression.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The fairy sighed. "I'm your fairy godmother."
"I didn't know I had a fairy godmother. A fairy godfather, yes, but..."
"Well, don't get too used to it. I'm only on loan from another show. Play the fairy, indeed. THIS IS TYPECASTING," she yelled at no-one in particular. "YOU'LL HEAR FROM MY AGENT ABOUT THIS!!!"
A sweatbead rolled down Nokoru's fluffy blond hair.
"AHEM," the fairy continued. "I've been sent here..."
"Sent from where?"
"I dunno, Fairy Central. I've been sent here to grant you a wish. I see your heart's desire is to know what it's like to be an ordinary boy."
"It is? And here I always thought I'd wanted nothing more than a lifetime supply of Sleetsicles and that X artbook everyone's talking about," Nokoru quipped. That fairy sure read ME like a book, he thought.
"Well, that, too. But I can only grant you one wish and this one's more important to the story," the fairy replied. "So close your eyes, kid, the special effects are downright awful." She waved a wand-looking thing. "I just say the magic woids, 'Ohkawa Nanase, gomen nasai,' and..."
BWAMFF!
"Hey, presto! You're an ordinary kid! Enjoy!" Her voice faded into the blackness in which Nokoru had inexplicably found himself.
What? What's...going...
He became aware of a noise. A beeping noise. He forced his eyes open, thinking he'd passed out, and was immediately treated to a view of an unfamiliar ceiling. But, as this is not Neon Genesis Evangelion, he didn't ponder on that for very long, instead reaching for the source of the beeping, fumbling for its off switch. He yawned expansively. Leaving his nice, warm bed, he put his little bare feet on the cold floor and winced. Looking about, he saw the room was vaguely familiar as his own...he thought. He opened the door and looked out. Everything looked so...small.
"Like it?"
There was the fairy, hovering behind him. "Like what?" he asked.
"Your home. I told you, you're an ordinary kid, now. You live in an apartment with your mother and your father and your mostly absent siblings just ouside the CLAMP Academy campus. There is no Imonoyama Zaibatsu. Your father's a salaryman and your mother's an office lady. Your brother Tsuzuku still edits a porn mag, though. Have fun!"
"W-wait!"
The fairy faded back into view.
"Where do I go to school?"
She grinned. "For a genius that sure was dense. You still go to the CLAMP Academy, of course. What, didja think I'd make you stupid?"
"Ah..."
"Quite." The fairy disappered again. Nokoru sighed and re-entered his room, and then spent the next five minutes searching for his uniform. Thus did the morning progress.
INSERT NOKORU SHOWER SCENE HERE
Nokoru found he quite liked seeing his parents (Gawd, he'd almost forgotten what his father looked like) scurry off to work. It was somehow...comforting. They ruffled his hair or kissed his cheek and wished him a good day at school and ran out the door. Nokoru smiled. He couldn't remember the last time his mother had touched him at all. He pushed more scrambled eggs into his mouth as he watched the news and wondered what Akira would cook himself for breakfast. Something far too complex for six-thirty in the morning, that's for sure...
Nokoru had to catch the bus to get to school, but at least the bus station wasn't too far away from his home. And after an uneventful bus trip, he walked thorugh the campus, wondering why on earth he had to commute every day when his family could just live on the campus. His ponderings were broken by a voice. "Nokoru-kun!"
He almost objected. Nokoru-kun? No-one had ever called him that before... He looked and drew in a breath to speak, seeing, of all people, Yudaiji Idomu trotting toward him. Hadn't he... Didn't he... Nokoru's thoughts floundered for a moment. That fairy really had read him like a book to be able to look at his memory...
Idomu grinned at Nokoru's expression. "You don't usually greet me with the look of a dying fish, Nokoru-kun," he said.
Nokoru rearranged his features into something a little more cognisant. "Ah, sorry. I..ah, was lost in thought. Still kinda groggy..."
Someone approached them. "Oh. Kaichou," the stranger said, waving for attention. Nokoru very nearly said "Yes?" But Idomu beat him to it. "Yes, what can I do for you?"
Nokoru watched the exchange. Of course. I'm just a regular kid, now. Someone else would have to be president of the student council. He looked about, noticing, for the first time, that the clock tower looked different. The CLAMP School seal was gone, and the tower bore an ordinary clock face. If there is no Imonoyama zaibatsu, who funds this school? It seems the same in every other respect... The buildings were the same, the walkways, the topiary, the clock tower, everything. All that was missing was that school seal....The Yudaiji zaibatsu now, perhaps?
"Are you feeling well, Nokoru-kun?" Idomu's voice snapped him from his thoughts. He looked, seeing Idomu looking at him sidelong, one eyebrow raised.
"Ah...fine," Nokoru mumbled. It would take some getting used to, he told himself. But it's only for a day.
Nokoru looked at his watch. Three-thirty already. His usual classes had been his usual classes. Nothing special about that, and he'd rather liked it that way, truth to tell. He found that, for once, he could concentrate on learning things instead of worrying about what would be said in too many places if his grades slipped, or wondering how many hours of sleep he'd get if more paperwork landed on his desk in the student council office or if some mystery needed solving. He could spend an hour or so on homework, and maybe get a good nights' sleep. He walked along, now, lending only half an ear to the decidedly one-sided conversation he was almost in. Akira was like that, after all. You get him started on a subject and he'll rattle on about it until he's said everything he wants to say, effortlessly working replies to anything you might say to him into the monologue.
Thank you, fairy, for at least leaving me this much consistency, Nokoru thought.
They continued to a building Nokoru recognised like his own home. Er, his old own home, not the...right. Akira's monologue shifted gears in the middle of the now forgotten subject.
"So I'll see you later, Nokoru-kun, I've got a few things to clear up, here," he said as they entered the building. "Things usually run smoothly but we hit a few snags every now and again..." He pushed upon the door to the Elementary Division Student Council Office, revealing the room beyond as Nokoru peeked through the door.
The room was the same. Exactly the same, except for the fact that he wasn't in it. Akira walked in, said hello to Suoh and Kaichou--Idomu.
Suoh seemed the same as always, laconic and stern. He'd been standing near the desk in the same place Nokoru had often seen him standing, usually about to berate him about the paperwork. He smiled in spite of himself and looked at the huge desk dominating the room.
Apart from a PC and Idomu himself, the desk was...empty. No uneasy towers of papers adorned this desk, nor did they inhabit the space immediately around it...
"Are you sure you're feeling well, Nokoru-kun?" Idomu queried. "You've been staring blankly at things all day."
"It's nothing," Nokoru said. I wonder what Idomu does all day if he hasn't any paperwork? "I should go home now, anyway."
The others nodded and he was almost out the door when it hit him. The realisation, that is, not the door. Something that had been nagging at him all day, but that he couldn't put his finger on. Being in that room had helped to jog his memory, though, and he finally pinned down that odd concept:
He hadn't noticed a lady in distress all day.
Ordinarily, it was almost as though he could hear some kind of cry of distress, whether she'd actually made a sound or not. No matter how far away, it seemed, he could hear her. He hadn't heard anyone all day. Come to think of it, everything seemed a little...different. Too quiet.
He dismissed the thought and left the building, walking in the direction of the bus station.
That's it? He suddenly asked himself. I just go home, now? The anticlimax of it sucked out his energy just like that. He sighed, feeling very much like a deflating balloon, suddenly rather depressed. He'd almost...yes, he kind of missed the paperwork and the detective missions that filled his off hours. He missed reading those request forms, missed Akira's tea, and, yes, even missed Suoh berating him about unfinished paperwork.
He noticed, a bit late, that, while his mind had wandered, he had wandered, too, until he came upon a girl siting on a bench near a pretty grove of sakura trees. She sniffled and rubbed her eyes. Nokoru started forward toward her. He'd find out what was wrong, and help her. Right? Just like he used to?But...how?
He stopped, and in that moment, another girl came round the corner, saw the first girl, and flew to her side. They spoke in quiet voices and then left, the second girl patting the first reassuringly. Nokoru watched them leave.
He came to a decision, turned, and left to go home.
"So, how did you like it?" The fairy asked, looking at Nokoru, who lay on his bed, ignoring the book in front of him and looking up at her instead.
"It was good at first," he answered. Might as well be honest. "I know what I'm missing now and that might make me actually miss it later, but..."
"But?" the fairy prompted.
But, I ultimately decided I didn't like it. Too much was missing."
"You sure it's not worth the peace and quiet?"
"I'm sure."
The fairy shrugged. "I'd figured you'd say that." She grinned. "You're a smart kid, after all. Right. A deal's a deal, it's only one day. Tomorrow you'll wake up in your mansion and none of this will be real."
The fairy was just fading away, when Nokoru smiled happily at her. "Thank you," he said.
"Kaichou, this paperwork has been piling up for weeks. You are going to at least look at it, aren't you?" There was no mistaking the slight edge to Suoh's voice. That was no request.
Nokoru grinned. "Of course."
But no sooner had he put pen to paper to sign an approval than he
heard it. Distress? A lady in trouble, once again.
"Oh, no, no, Kaichou, come back!" Suoh shouted as Nokoru
darted out the door, Akira hot on his heels. The ninja sighed and
followed after them. Nothing ever changes, does it?
