#from outside

I didn’t know— not for sure— that there was anything strange here, before I was enrolled and had already been assigned my dorm; it was only on a whim that I applied at all. Elsewhere. A good school with a name, at least, that would let me pretend I was free.

When I was accepted, I went. It was a silly choice, chasing a thought, a dream that EU would make me someone else, would be something else, something that would let a daydreamer feel at home in the real world.

I didn’t expect that it really would.

I heard the whispers first: the wind through the trees, then the crows, then the RAs as they escorted us to our rooms, taking bets. It hadn’t even been half an hour before I could feel it, the cast of a story, the leaves outside sounding like pages of a book turning.

There’s nothing special about me, really, but I know how to get lost in a good tale. How to let it chew me up and swallow me and still be able to crawl back out.

I’m not brave— not any braver than anyone else, anyway. So I listened. And watched. And waited. And the whispers grew louder.

I can’t see a thing, without my glasses, and I’ve always doubted that even with the ones Cat’s Eyes sells I’d be able to See. My gifts are not so obvious, or so easily stolen away. Certainly I never even knew that they could be used, before, or even were there at all— but things are different here. This is Elsewhere, and here I not only know my cards but keep them close to my chest.

I’m known as Mentira. Falsehood. (I thought it was funny, before I knew how true it would become.)

Not that I lie, really, but I don’t tell the truth either; I don’t like taking risks, and I hear more than I should.

People begin to understand that, whether I mean them to or not— I can’t help it. It’s in the grapevine, so to speak, and I can read the whispers as clearly as words on a page, can feel the lines unfolding around me perfectly to script. It’s hard not to be around to see all of the interesting parts. So I get better at hiding it— iron and ramen packets can only do so much. I’ve existed quietly here; I like the stories, but I don’t want to be in them. I like knowing, but I don’t intend to do anything about what I hear, so it’s better to play like I don’t notice anything at all (however hard it is, at first, to do so).

I don’t write anything down. I’m not after remembering, or keeping anything that isn’t mine.

Sometimes, when it gets quiet, I sit under the old trees, soak up their songs, and I do risk whispering the poetry to the crows. It isn’t quite the same, but it’s similar enough that they, if no one else, probably realize what I’m doing… but they wouldn’t rat me out— I meant it as a kindness, nothing more or less— and I have always been careful. I listened.

I never listened too much. I know the feel of going too far under, getting held down by the cobwebs of someone else’s world, and I come up for air when it is too much. Too loud. Too obvious.

I went to class. Made friends with my roommate. Stayed away from the pool. The normal college experience. I never do anything.

But oh, the things I heard. They will tell you stories, if you know how to listen, if you’re careful enough to avoid being caught.

Eventually I graduated. I left. But even when the memories were faded, the whispers never were, and they spread like roots.

I came back. I was called, maybe. I was homesick, definitely. I didn’t regret a thing, however much parts of myself seemed achingly empty whenever there were no faint murmurs to hide the holes, especially once they were being filled again.

I got a job, if it could be called that. Upon telling the interviewer what I could do, and offering as little proof as I could manage, he hired me on the spot and gave me an office, but no position. Occasionally kids would stop by, and more occasionally things playing at being kids, to ask me questions or talk for a while. I told them what I could, however I felt I could get away with it (being staff, after all, did not make me safe).

They started calling me Ms. Story, and it made me laugh a little whenever I heard it. It made the crows laugh more. It made Them laugh the most.

They tell you stories, if you know how to listen, if you can coax them out; eventually the students-who-were-not-students would bring me riddles, rambles, and nonsense, suspecting. They would follow me in my walks under the trees and hunt in my words for answers that I was never meant to know.

But I could hear the weight in their footsteps, and would always tread carefully myself. I was not there to do harm. I knew where the lines were drawn and danced respectfully around them. I knew too much, even being aware of that, but I stepped on no one’s toes and made no alliances or enemies.

I gave what I could to those who knew how to ask, Neighbors or no, and I’m still here, in my office. Listening.

It’s been a while since anyone came by.

Kudou sat at the desk, the light of the lamp pooling orange over his papers. Maps of the stars, maps of the surrounds, and maps of the human body overflowed their bounds and drifted to the ground to land in heaps around his feet.

Heiji let his bag thunk to the ground.

“I’m home.”

“Hattori.” He responded, not taking his eyes off his notes. He tapped his pen against the desk over and over again. “What, no welcome for me?” Heiji stretched his aching shoulders and made his way over to Kudou’s side, trying not to step on anything important.

Kudou snorted, but his mouth ticked up at the corner.

“Welcome home, I guess.” he said.

Heiji put a hand on his shoulder, driven to touch by some force he couldn’t identify.

Kudou tilted his head up to catch Heiji’s eyes, and in the dim light, Heiji could swear that he could see through them to something else. There was a door hidden in Kudou’s gaze, one that Kudou flirted with stepping through every day. “Glad to be back.” He said. It was second nature to collapse sideways, let himself fall against Kudou’s side.

“Oh.” Kudou said quietly. He wrapped an arm around Heiji’s shoulder, and Heiji rested his head against Kudou’s.