Untold

Participants:

elaine_icon.gif kimiko_icon.gif

Scene Title Untold
Synopsis Kimiko reveals a secret to Elaine.
Date February 10, 2020

Night in Yamagato Park is a neon-lit palette on a black canvas.

A pair of opaque black glass doors lead into the office of Yamagato Industries regional President. The floor is marble-tiled, with tall columns along the walls, stone planters filled with tall ferns, and antique paintings of Showa-era landscapes along the walls. The left wall from the entrance is angled nearly forty-five degrees, given the shape of the building, and is entirely glass. It affords a dusk panorama of Yamagato Park, with its purple and blue neon lighting contrasting against the midnight blue and starlit black of the sky.

Kimiko Nakamura stands in silence beside the floor-to-ceiling windows in her dimly-lit office of black marble and dark glass. Her reflection is muted, muddied and indistinct. Freezing rain patters against the glass, fog floods the streets below, making the neon glow bloom into impossible plays of light and dark.

Turning to the sound of the opening door, Kimiko’s dark eyes consider the redhead entering, then directs her attention not to the chair opposite her desk, but the black-lacquered sideboard nearby with crystal decanters of alcohol and glasses in angular, geometric shapes. “Are you thirsty?” Kimiko asks, walking across the marble floor with a click of her heels, preparing to make herself a drink one way or the other.

But she figures Elaine Darrow may need one as well.


Yamagato Building
Executive Suite

February 10th
8:12 pm


"I could drink."

Elaine had cut back on her drinking quite a bit when things were bad with Robyn, but when they had split, her relationship with alcohol had resumed to a semi-normal one. A drink out with friends, a drink at a party, but rarely a drink to take an edge off. This was one of the few times she had felt the slightest need to use it to calm her nerves.

"I feel I should apologize about the mirror. I didn't expect that it would end up damaged in all of that. I suppose there was a lot I didn't expect."

“It’s alright,” Kimiko says softly, upturning a glass and pouring herself two fingers of Brandy. She does the same for Elaine. “I feel like we got the answers we wanted, even though I’m not entirely sure what those are from your perspective.” She sets the crystal stopper back into the neck of the bottle, eyes lingering on the reflection of amber liquid distorted behind frosted glass.

“I’d had suspicions for a long time, about who I am.” Kimiko says softly, walking the glasses over to Elaine, offering her out one, then holding hers with one side angled toward the redhead in a proposal of a wordless toast. “Here’s to unwanted confirmations.”

Elaine takes the glass, tipping it as well before lifting it to her lips and taking a sip. "Unwanted confirmations," she agrees, but she ends up staring into the glass for a long moment. "You told me our paths were intertwined. You had some idea of what all of this was before it happened. But you toasted to unwanted confirmations… did you know my mother and not remember if you did?"

There are implications. Kimiko may have faced the same wipes that seemed to be handed out so willingly with the Company. "I didn't know she knew Japanese."

Kimiko downs half of her glass in a single swallow, then hangs her head and turns toward her black, glass-topped desk. “I had suspicions,” is all she says to clarify. “Once I had reason to suspect that my father’s journal contained a record of the Crossing, I…” Kimiko’s eyes halfway lid, “there were things from my childhood that I started to question.” When she arrives at her desk, Kimiko turns her back to it and leans up against it, cradling her drink in both hands like a talisman.

“I’m like you,” Kimiko says into her muted reflection in the drink, only looking up to Elaine once an uncomfortable moment of silence has hung between them. “Special,” isn’t how Elaine imagined she’d quantify it. “I manifested when I was young, but I never knew. My father kept the truth from me most of my life. I only learned the truth after his death, when one of his attorneys delivered a sealed letter, intended to be delivered on a specific date after his passing.”

Kimiko lifts her drink to her lips, but doesn’t quite sip. Instead, she talks into the glass. “You’re one of a handful of people I’ve ever told.” She admits into the liquor. “I’m what they call a claircognizant.” She finally looks up to Elaine. “I can pull information out of thin air. Know it just by wanting to. The more people who know the truth, the clearer the information I receive is. The fewer… the… cloudier it becomes.”

Now the context of Kimiko’s suspicions is cast in a new light.

“I’ve always felt different. Detached from this place.” Kimiko says as she looks around the office, then back to Elaine. “My mother loved me, unconditionally, but I always felt there was some difference between the way she loved me and the way she loved Hiro.” Her voice cracks when she mentions her late brother. “Now…” Kimiko drinks. Just a sip. “I always assumed it was an affair.”

It feels like Kimiko wishes it was. Like that would somehow make it easier.

There are pieces in Elaine's head that slowly fit together, but there are other questions that remain. "So my mother's memory was confirmation of things you'd suspected. If no one knew the truth, it would be hard for you to find it with your gift." She takes another sip from her glass, this one a little bigger than the last sip.

"So if it wasn't an affair, what was it?"

Kimiko fixes a long look at Elaine, searching her features. It takes a while for her to actually say anything, sipping on what’s left of her drink between beats of silence. “Your mother and I came from the same place,” is how she finally explains it. “I’ve been digging deeper into things since I sent you to the Deveaux Society, things in the journal,” she sets down her nearly finished drink on the edge of her desk with a soft clink of glass on glass.

“There was an experiment in 1982, the Looking Glass,” Kimiko says, echoing a part of their last conversation. “It… tore a hole between this world and another,” she says with a motion of her hand in the air, as if indicating a far-off place. “People came through, against their will, and were stranded here.” She blinks a look over to Elaine, then paces around her desk over to the large windows overlooking the city. “The names in my father’s journal… are those who crossed.”

Kimiko swallows down a lump in her throat. “The spiral, the aurora, what we saw in that mirror? I pulled knowledge of it from the ether as we were watching the display. It happened in 1982. The Company hid all evidence of it, gave those who crossed new memories and new lives. Integrated them into society.” She turns slowly, looking at Elaine, putting her back to the window. “Your mother, Roselyn, was one. I was another.”

"Richard shared that much. I knew about the others, but I didn't know about you. I guess you didn't, either." Elaine takes a long swallow from her glass before she looks back to Kimiko. She doesn't appear to be confused, more concerned than anything. "I know they covered it all up. I guess I have all that to thank for existing but it seems almost bittersweet."

There's a curious look that crosses her face, and for a moment she seems unsure if she'll ask the question that she finally does. "She knew you before you came over. The Japanese…" There's a pause. "Do you know what your relationship to her was?"

“No,” Kimiko says with a small, weary shake of her head. The ‘no’ holds so much more weight now that Elaine knows about her ability. “I don’t know where they were, I don’t know… anything beyond what you saw. Nothing.” The frustration in her voice is palpable. “Whatever else there may have been would have been contained in the mirror, and that…” she exhales a slow sigh. “That was nearly gone before your friend did what he did.”

Kimiko threads a lock of dark hair behind one ear, looking down to her unfinished drink. She traces a path back to it and picks it up, rolling the remnant of liquor around in the glass. “What about you?” Kimiko asks, looking past the glass to Elaine. “You said something about… memories, back then. How’re you feeling?”

"I feel alright. There's certainly something different, but it's hard to really put it together. I think I got some of the memories left over from that 'ghost'. I feel like there are things that aren't mine in there somewhere," Elaine shrugs a shoulder a bit. "I honestly wish I had more answers from any of it. I wish it made more sense."

She looks into her glass, then takes a sip again before speaking. "The others, the ones that came over… we could try and speak with them. Perhaps there's some clue in there, something that can help figure out what it meant." She pauses. "I hadn't realized how personal this was for you as well. I'm glad you got to see her too."

Kimiko’s response is a sigh at first. “You’re welcome to,” she admits in a hushed voice, tipping back her glass and finishing the swallow left inside. “I’m not sure there’s any more answers I need. It’s already so…” she closes her eyes and shakes her head.

“My question was a personal one. I needed to know what it was that… made me different.” Kimiko explains, followed by a lingering look on Elaine. “Maybe there is some kinship in that. A sense of unbelonging that you and I intrinsically share. Maybe that’s why I appreciate you as much as I do.” She looks down to the empty glass, then sets it on her desk. “Maybe it’s all a coincidence.”

Kimiko leans away from her desk, running a hand through her hair and shaking it out from its immaculate coif. “If you need anything to help… get closure?” She looks up to Elaine, regarding the redhead through the dark fringe of her lashes, “Whatever you need. Talk to me. We can use some of that kinship in unbelonging to make our lives more tolerable.” She pauses, considering something extra that goes unsaid for the moment.

"There's really nothing else you'd want to know?" Elaine finishes her own glass, seeming to consider the question of herself at the same time. "I suppose there's some measure of satisfaction of knowing that something is, but not the 'whats' and 'hows' that make it up. I have questions, certainly, but I'm not sure what I gain by seeking those answers." She smiles, though it's a bittersweet one.

"I do feel some sense of closure. Seeing those memories of her, I still feel as if she was the person I remember her to be, even if the circumstances were a lot more complicated than I had anticipated." The words make her think. "It does feel like an unbelonging. But perhaps we make our own place."

“Closure isn’t a destination,” Kimiko says in a thoughtful, if distant, tone of voice, “it’s a journey that never quite reaches its end.” She comes to stand beside Elaine, looking her up and down for a moment. At this close proximity the height disparity between the two is much more apparent. Normally, Kimiko feels larger than life. But now, in this moment of personal vulnerability, she feels less exaggerated, more human and humble.

“But you’re right,” Kimiko opines. “We do make our own place, no matter what world it’s in. That said,” she lifts a hand and gently touches Elaine’s arm. “What you’ve experienced is a significant, psychological trauma that you could potentially not understand the long-term repercussions of for months, if not years. There’s no textbook about what you’ve experienced, no way to say what the long-term effects will be. But I want you to know that, no matter what it is, you have my full support.”

Kimiko manages a weary smile. “From one outsider to another,” she says with an incline of her head toward Elaine, “we can only watch out for each other.”

"You're right about closure. I suppose after a certain point it just becomes easier to move forward than it had been before." Elaine's been on that journey her whole life. Some kind of stepping stone to make it easier to progress was just what she needed. Her gaze fixes on Kimiko, and it's a softer one.

"Ms. Nakamura," she starts, then realizes how that sounds in the much more serious, personal situation. "Kimiko," she corrects herself for this instance. "I appreciate everything you've done for me and any future help you extend in my direction. I'll certainly let you know if anything comes up, this is something that I will have to deal with day-by-day until I have some idea of what kind of effect it truly had on me."

She nods her head slowly. "I agree, we'll have to watch out for each other."

Kimiko considers Elaine in a moment of thoughtful silence, moving to sit on the edge of her desk again. Her posture is more defensive than Elaine is accustomed to seeing the CEO, but these moments of vulnerability are perhaps the only window anyone gets into the real person Kimiko Nakamura is. “That’s all we can ever hope to do,” she says with a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

“Elaine,” Kimiko says with a sudden look up to the redhead. “No matter what comes. Of the past, the future…” her brows furrow, dark eyes narrowing as she looks away to a dimly-lit corner of her office. She changes her mind, shaking her head. Whatever she was going to say, it goes unsaid for now.

“I’ll walk you out,” Kimiko offers, pushing away from her desk. “Take a few days off. Relax. Settle.”

“See how it goes.”


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