Categories > Anime/Manga > Tsubasa/xxxHolic
Yuuko stumbled, half awake, through the library, tripping over a pile of books including an original manuscript copy of the Betty Crocker cookbook, a knitting stitch dictionary, a copy of Herodotus's Histories bound in calfskin and --
"Why the hell," she said, "why the hell do you even have an Elinor Glyn novel? Why do you have more than one?"
"She was a secret master of alchemy, you know," said Clow. "Her works, if read by the initiate, reveal the secrets of the Golden Dawn. In her philosophy is explained the essential yearning for unity between yin and yang. Gold into dross is the least of the mysteries she conceals in the saga of the Essential Feminine fleeing and then yielding to the Eternal Male."
Clow lies: you might as well say Clow breathes. Clow tells stories, half-truths, fictions, exaggerations, until you don't know what he's talking about and really don't care. "Shut up," said Yuuko. She sat down, winced, and pulled a copy of Rilla of Ingleside and a popular but very loose translation of Ovid from behind the cushion.
Clow smiled at her, a little half twist of his mouth: Yuuko imagined throwing one of the little heavy stone ornaments littering the tables at him. She imagined it hitting him on the head, with a satisfyingly heavy thunk, and the way his pale skin would redden and then darken. She imagined the way he would duck half an second before it hit, reaching up to grab it in mid-air, and look at her with irritating amusement and affection in his eyes. She didn't throw it. "Dearest Yuuko," said Clow.
"What are you even doing?" said Yuuko, yawning. His desk was covered with bits of crumpled paper and there was an abacus lying on the desk, clearly in use. Clow had a terrible tendency to spend hours on equations and theories, working them three quarters of the way through and then skipping to the end. He always wrote the solution in his deceptively tidy and unreadable handwriting and then abandoned it to its fate. One of them got blown away in a minor time wind to a universe where a man spent his life trying to decipher his reasoning and the missing work, and bequeathed the work to his daughter on his death bed. She looked at it and said, /But it's just nonsense, of course/, and the man had been enlightened, even as he died.
"I had an idea," said Clow simply, and Yuuko stopped in mid-yawn and stared at him.
"So it's time," she said, her voice quiet but very hard. In all the times she had thought about the coming of this day, she had never thought she would feel like this; annoyed, and a little sad, but not angry or mournful at all. He was such a selfish idiot, how could she grieve the thought of him leaving? It was just the thought of the mess he was going to leave her.
"But I'm so tired," said Clow, his voice light and coaxing, sweet as honey, and just as false as it could be.
"Why the hell," she said, "why the hell do you even have an Elinor Glyn novel? Why do you have more than one?"
"She was a secret master of alchemy, you know," said Clow. "Her works, if read by the initiate, reveal the secrets of the Golden Dawn. In her philosophy is explained the essential yearning for unity between yin and yang. Gold into dross is the least of the mysteries she conceals in the saga of the Essential Feminine fleeing and then yielding to the Eternal Male."
Clow lies: you might as well say Clow breathes. Clow tells stories, half-truths, fictions, exaggerations, until you don't know what he's talking about and really don't care. "Shut up," said Yuuko. She sat down, winced, and pulled a copy of Rilla of Ingleside and a popular but very loose translation of Ovid from behind the cushion.
Clow smiled at her, a little half twist of his mouth: Yuuko imagined throwing one of the little heavy stone ornaments littering the tables at him. She imagined it hitting him on the head, with a satisfyingly heavy thunk, and the way his pale skin would redden and then darken. She imagined the way he would duck half an second before it hit, reaching up to grab it in mid-air, and look at her with irritating amusement and affection in his eyes. She didn't throw it. "Dearest Yuuko," said Clow.
"What are you even doing?" said Yuuko, yawning. His desk was covered with bits of crumpled paper and there was an abacus lying on the desk, clearly in use. Clow had a terrible tendency to spend hours on equations and theories, working them three quarters of the way through and then skipping to the end. He always wrote the solution in his deceptively tidy and unreadable handwriting and then abandoned it to its fate. One of them got blown away in a minor time wind to a universe where a man spent his life trying to decipher his reasoning and the missing work, and bequeathed the work to his daughter on his death bed. She looked at it and said, /But it's just nonsense, of course/, and the man had been enlightened, even as he died.
"I had an idea," said Clow simply, and Yuuko stopped in mid-yawn and stared at him.
"So it's time," she said, her voice quiet but very hard. In all the times she had thought about the coming of this day, she had never thought she would feel like this; annoyed, and a little sad, but not angry or mournful at all. He was such a selfish idiot, how could she grieve the thought of him leaving? It was just the thought of the mess he was going to leave her.
"But I'm so tired," said Clow, his voice light and coaxing, sweet as honey, and just as false as it could be.
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