Sakura and Snow
Author's Notes -- General:
"Sakura and Snow" is a fanfic set in the "X" / "Tokyo Babylon" universe created by CLAMP, and it's my own personal answer to the question of how to resolve Subaru Sumeragi and Seishirou Sakurazuka's longtime conflict. Be warned that this is going to be a very long story, and unfortunately I'm something of a slow writer--once everything that I've written so far has been posted, there may be an extended wait between chapters. My goal, however, is to finish "Sakura" before CLAMP finishes X. I think that might just be achievable....
A few comments on the story in general:
- Like most fics, this story contains [SPOILERS]. If you haven't read up through the end of Tokyo Babylon and the most recent issue of X, and if you don't want to find out what happens in those books, then don't read this. (Anyway, you'll get more out of this story if you are familiar with the manga.) Please note: "Sakura and Snow" left the official CLAMP continuity at around book 10 of X and became an alternate universe. I really did try to remain within the realm of the manga, but I couldn't work in the more current events without redoing the whole damn thing, so for the most part I'm even not going to try. So from here on out, we're flying on our own. Wear your seatbelts!
- As mentioned on the welcome page, this fic contains some male/male sexual material. The explicit sections are relatively few, though, and will be clearly marked with an - S; alternative chapters will be provided wherever possible. There's a lot more to the story than just sex, so even if you're not into yaoi or ecchi I hope you'll find this story worthwhile and enjoyable. If you think you're likely to be offended, however, please stop reading now.
- This story is a work in progress and is subject to constant revisions. Also, once the entire story has been written I'll probably need to go back through it and tighten up or redo some sections completely. For this reason, I've changed my archiving policy for this story; please see my policy notice on the welcome page for more information. Thank you for your patience. ^_^
- Please see the Legal Disclaimer and Copyright sections of the Welcome Page for general copyright information. Copyrights from other sources will be listed in these author's notes.
- As always, very special thanks go to my prereaders: K-chan, Shanti, Sunsun, Jess, and Kristin O.
The rest of these notes concern specific chapters of the story; you should probably go back and begin reading the fanfic now. At the end of each chapter there's a link to take you to the appropriate section of notes.
The flashback sequences are taken from Rika Takahashi's translation of the Subaru character file CD. At the time of writing this, I didn't have any visual reference materials for this scene, so you'll notice a few differences between this and the manga. I may rewrite it in the future, if anyone finds the inconsistencies bothersome....I also took a few poetic liberties with the transcriptions of Subaru and Seishirou's spells: I broke up those multisyllabics into pieces easier for this gaijin to pronounce, and I swapped a couple of "l"s and "r"s purely because I liked the words better that way. Gomen, Rika! :)
This is it! This is the utter brute of a chapter that took me two months and thirteen drafts to complete! And I would probably still be working on it if my friend Shanti hadn't given me the suggestion that I should take out part of Seishirou's ramblings and use them as the prologue. (Evil magicians like to hear themselves talk, I think.) So this chapter is specially dedicated to her
Seishirou, by the way, is drinking plum wine in this chapter. I've never had it--I don't drink--but Shanti says it's purple and sweet. I hope it's not somehow inappropriate....
I don't have a clue what music he's listening to, though. You got me on that one.
RE: Subaru's spells
"/On batarei ya sowaka/" is a chant he used in the anime during the opening credit sequence of the first OAV. It seemed to be sort of a lead-in to his actual summoning of a ghost, so I'm using it as a power-building chant here.
"/On nama samanta etc/" I borrowed from a poem by Gary Snyder. The poem is called "Spel against Demons"<sic>, and in context the line reads:
He who saves tortured intelligent demons and filth-eating
hungry ghosts, his spel is
NAMAH SAMANTAH VAJRANAM CHANDA MAHAROSHANA
SPHATAYA HUM TRAKA HAM MAM
As you can see, I adapted it a little to match Subaru's other spells.
"Mitsu-in" is, as far as I've been able to determine, the way you say "mudra" in Japanese. "Mudra" is the Sanskrit word for a power-gesture; I think "mitsu-in" translates as "esoteric gesture." The "seed-syllable" or "Om" (rendered "on" in Japanese), is the primal sound, the word which signals the begining of creation. And ofuda are those cards which Subaru and Seishirou use in their spells and to create shikigami, or spirit creatures. (I always think of them as psychic Post-It notes. :)
The actual word used for Subaru's ceremonial garb in the manga is apparently "shikifuku"--I used "shouzoku" (the word for a Shinto priest's robes) here before I knew better, and afterward decided to stick with it because the sounds and number of syllables seemed to work better in this sentence.
The first song Seishirou listens to is Enigma's "Return to Innocence"; see also Kristin Huntsman's fanfic of the same name. The second one ought to be obvious enough to X-fen, but it's "Forever," the end theme of the X movie. I just couldn't resist.... And an enka is a melancholy genre of Japanese song, supposedly listened to usually by older people. From what I've heard, it's apparently their cultural equivalent of the country-western "my wife left me, the dog died, and now I'm crying in my beer" kind of song.
Mrs. Nakamura's name and general cluelessness (although nothing else about the character) were lifted from Mimi Zhou's "The Strange Case of Dr. Seishirou/Sakurazukamori." Good story; go and read it...
"Nukume dori" is a Japanese painting subject for the month of December. It shows a falcon holding a small bird in its claws. However, the falcon doesn't intend to eat the bird--merely to use it as a foot warmer so that its talons don't get cold. When the next morning comes, the falcon lets the bird go, and as a reward doesn't hunt in the direction that the bird has taken until a day has passed.
Seishirou is therefore being a little creative with his interpretation.
The following quote from Subaru's flashbacks--
"For today, sleep. Because I'm with you.
"Even if somebody comes....
"I'll chase them away."
--is from Tokyo Babylon 4, the story in which Subaru evokes the ghost of a little girl, wanting to offer her mother comfort, and is forced to lie to the woman when the child has no comforting words to give. Subaru stops by Seishirou's place afterward, and Seishirou, seeing that Subaru's upset, gives him hot tea (or something) and puts him to bed. The quote is excerpted from Seishirou's words to Subaru, from the translation by C. Sue Shambaugh.
The idea of Arashi being romantically inclined toward Subaru probably came from reading Kristin Huntsman's fic "Lyric: I Heard It Through the Grapevine," which was derived from an observation by Yin Lai on a peculiarity of the Chinese translation of the X manga. Whew! So go and read K-chan's fic.
Hmmm, not much in the way of author's notes this time...only that Detective Yamakawa is from the first Tokyo Babylon OAV. I'm taking it for granted that Seishirou was telling the truth when he said the detective was going to be all right....
Regarding Subaru's reading matter at the beginning of the chapter: although Chinese kanji would ordinarily have the same meanings as Japanese ones (the latter being derived from the former), apparently ancient Chinese is quite different from modern Chinese. Also, Taoist texts like this one seem to have made great use of doubled and obscured meanings. So I've taken the liberty of imagining that there could be some way of writing "Earth Dragon" that Subaru might not be so familiar with. Special thanks to Sunsun and Monica for their advice!
If you didn't get Subaru's little joke at the end, try rereading the end of "Tokyo Babylon" Vol. 1: "Babel." For those of you who don't have it:
"Subaru-kun..."
"Seishirou-san?"
"...Am I sexy?"
Gee...and it only took Subaru nine years to answer.
Thanks for this chapter go to Shanti for her advice on ogling. <eg>
The geography of this section is actually more or less accurate, although the descriptions of specific areas and buildings are invented. Thank you, Baedecker and Lonely Planet!
Detective Kono is the policeman from the second OAV.
The song, once again, is "Return to Innocence" by Enigma. Remember these lyrics; there'll be a quiz later. ^^;;;
The possessing spirit that Subaru fights in this chapter was invented. It bears some relationship to the Japanese "hungry ghosts" and some to the North American Wendigo.
/On sowa hamba shuda saraba taraman wa hamba shudokan/ - This is one of the chants from the first OAV; I believe it's the one Subaru uses to deactivate the curse ofuda planted at the construction site.
/On shira battaniri un sowaka/ - I found this one in a book, but I was foolish and didn't write down which book it was, and now I can't find it again. My bad. These chants actually do have meanings, although they're mystical meanings unrelated to any linguistic meanings that the syllables themselves may have. This one signifies: "When this spell is chanted, the faith in me reaches everywhere, and by the true power of the Buddhist precepts, evil and misfortune will be abolished and luck and wisdom attained, suffering removed and comfort achieved, and pain transmuted into delight." Yup, all that in five little words! Subaru is using this spell to divert the sakanagi or magical backlash that is the inevitable result of using spells to do harm. The idea of grounding energy in the earth after a spell probably owes more to Western magic than to onmyoujitsu, but it seemed to work well enough for the purposes of this story.
The second half of this chapter was originally released as a separate Christmas story. I've since done a few very minor revisions on it and attached it to the first half; the original version is still available at its old link.
The girl on rollerblades is a cameo by Kamimura Shirushi and appears courtesy of her author, Jessica Liang.
The quote "But I love this Tokyo..." is from the first book of TB. The translation, as usual, is by C. Sue Shambaugh.
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