"Ladies and gentlemen...at this time we would like to ask you to please return your seat backs and tray tables to the upright and locked position, as we are beginning our final approach into Newark International Airport....
"The time at our destination is approximately 11:00 p.m...the weather is sunny but breezy, with the temperature being about 18 degrees Celsius.
"For your own safety, please remain in your seat with the seatbelt securely fastened until the plane has stopped at the terminal.
"Thank you for flying JAL, and have a pleasant day."
"What do you mean," Seishirou said slowly, " 'he's gone to New Jersey' ?"
Subaru-kun's Adventures in New Jersey
An alternate Tokyo Babylon fanfic
By Natalie Baan
Hokuto was nodding her head energetically. It made the little butterfly antennae she was wearing bobble up and down.
"That's it exactly!" she exclaimed. She was preparing lunch, and her knife went /whack! whack!/ on the cutting board. "I mean, of all things! If one's /going/ to go to the United States, one should at least hope to visit the /important/ places. Los Angeles! Hollywood! New York City! What's the point of going to America if you're not going to be a real tourist?" She sighed heavily. "But knowing my super-fervent brother, he won't even bother to make side stops to see the sights. Just straight to his target, za-zoom!"
Hokuto was waving her knife illustratively. Seishirou took a step back.
"And it's all your fault, Mr. Sakurazuka Seishirou!"
"My fault?" Seishirou asked, with just the right measure of plaintive surprise. All the while, he kept a close watch on the knife. Hokuto had already shown that she had both astonishing insights into his nature and a wickedly fast right hand. He wasn't about to let her catch him out again.
"You know perfectly well!" She glowered at him sternly. "If /you/ hadn't mysteriously disappeared from the hospital after the press found out about poor Yuuya's mother, /Subaru/ wouldn't have decided that you were angry with him after all, and he wouldn't be on a plane right now!"
Seishirou supposed that did make a sort of bizarre sense. He had seen how agitated Subaru could get when the onmyouji thought he was at fault.
"But why New Jersey?" he asked.
Hokuto turned and studied him for a long moment, with a curious mix of speculation and amusement gleaming in her emerald green eyes. Then, she faced abruptly back to her cutting board.
"I can't tell you," she answered primly.
"It's a secret."
Seishirou didn't give in to the urge to smack himself in the forehead, as it would be inelegant, not to mention rather painful. However, it was a very near thing. Hokuto frequently had that effect on people.
"Well," he said instead, smiling gently, "I guess there's only one thing to be done...."
A moment or two later, Hokuto's expression became very surprised.
* * * * *
Subaru made his way through the crowds toward the revolving track of the luggage claim. So many people...so many different /kinds/ of people. It was a little bit overwhelming. He'd never been out of Japan before, had never had to face such a jostling mob of people in disparate sizes and shapes and colors. They bustled around him, and Subaru held his hat more firmly to his head so that he wouldn't lose it in the crush. He gazed around with wide, anxious eyes.
He was desperately homesick for Japan already. He missed Hokuto-chan.
And Seishirou-san....
But it wouldn't be long, he told himself. As soon as he'd accomplished what he came here to do, he could go home. As soon as he had made everything all right....
<Seishirou-san...I know I can't give you back the eye that you lost because of me.>
<But maybe I can give you a different kind of gift....>
<Something that will help you....>
He found the correct luggage track and squeezed up to the edge of it. Bags and suitcases were already tumbling onto it from the conveyor belt. He saw one of his bags coming toward him, grabbed the handle, and pulled.
And pulled.
And pulled and pulled and /pulled,/ as the belt tried to carry the bag past him and the bag refused to be lifted up off it. The two of them struggled back and forth for a moment: Subaru teetering on the balls of his feet and trying very hard not to be dragged onto the conveyor belt, and the suitcase sitting there ponderously and not doing very much of anything. Finally Subaru gasped and heaved at the bag one last time just before it could get away from him entirely, and he managed just barely to slide it up and over the lip of the luggage track. He staggered back as it fell to the floor with a thud.
It was absolutely the /last/ time that he would let his sister pack for him.
[Author's note: All right...the genesis of this fic was that place in TB 6 where Subaru is talking to the blind man about how he's afraid that Seishirou is going to lose his sight completely. The man starts telling him about seeing eye dogs, and how they're trained in New Jersey. Now, I live not twenty minutes away from the Seeing Eye Headquarters, so as soon as I saw that I went "Oh my God! They're talking about New Jersey! They're talking about Morristown! /That's practically my house!!/" (Okay, so I need to get a life.) One thing led to another which led to the fragment that you see here. The story eventually continues on to include a fanfic author moonlighting as a limo driver, a satanic one-eyed golden retreiver named Buddy, and Seishirou cruising down the New Jersey Turnpike in a slick black car trying to find his exit. (Yes, it's full of bad New Jersey jokes. I'm from this state; I'm allowed to make fun of the place.) It's way toward the bottom of my queue of things to write on, so the odds of it ever actually being completed are miniscule. But it's hopefully good for a giggle or two.]