Bare feet - rushed and unrevised.

Hi guys. *waves* In recent event that is rather itchy to see in the forum, I thought I''d post up an early version of my latest writing project "Bare feet". It is a very rough draft, and is rather cut and short, I am working to finish off chapter 1, however am only going the post the first quarter of it.

A little about the fic. It is basically written in first person point of view, an American-Japanese man (which is REALLY hard to write as, considering I''ll have to cross gender, nationality, language, age! barriers). I won''t give away too much, but "Bare feet" (I''m considering changing the name, perhaps to Karuykai - or something), is about a self-discovery journey, of a Japanese who has lost his identity, and on his way also finds love.

Enjoy reading, the next installment or next revised version of the chapter will probably be posted by the end of this week.

=)

All comments are appreciated to silversun80@hotmail.com.

Arigato.

Sil.

P.S: It is an original piece of fiction, and not a fanfiction. All the characters are copyrighted to me. Do ask my permission to use them elsewhere.

Thank you!

Bare feet
By Silversun.

Chapter 1 - Awakening of the spirit.

Butterfly,
Or falling leaves,
Which must I dance... - A Geisha song.

I always like traveling in the month of April, never too hot, too cold, just plain and mild. Yet it was anything but plain and mild the evening I arrived in Himawari, an inn deep in heart of Gion district, Kyoto. It was far from an unusual sight for a man in his thirties, in a business suit to step out of a taxi in the narrow spiraling streets of Gion Kobu, but I imagined I must have been a picture of extraordinaire with luggages and walking in an inn nonetheless. Why, even the inn keeper couldnõ?Tt contain her surprised tone when I informed him of my months-length stay. An American-Japanese man, in his thirties living in the forbidden walls of the karyukai õ?" the Japanese term for õ?oflower and willow worldõ?- is similar to that of the ridiculous picture of a gaijin õ?" an outsider, a foreigner- to dress up in kimono, okobo and start giggling in the graceful way that a geiko would.

õ?oKonbanwa, Hamamoto-san, welcome to the Himawari inn.õ? õ?" the inn keeper chirped with a light bow. She was a well-aged energetic woman. Her thinning white hair framed an oval-shaped face, flickering a face of an elegant beauty in her youth.
õ?oKonbanwa, Himawari-san. Thank you for letting me stay, especially after such a short notice. And of course, considering the circumstancesõ?Ưõ? I spoke in my definite voice, indicating my deep-felt gratitude. The American lifestyle has not effected my Japanese manners.
õ?oPlease, Hamamoto-san, itõ?Ts Natsume, and no need to thank me. I am bored from having so many girls staying in the inn anyway, and you still speak Japanese better than all the rest of them gaijin reportersõ? Her sentence skipped a beat, which lead me to think that she could have said the word in a humourous note.

The room was spacious and unfurnished. There were tatami mats on the floor, faintly smelling of mothballs, sliding yellowed doors leading to a small tipsy balcony. An unhinged wooden table to the corner of the room, a hanging scroll of bright golden chrysanthemum branches for summer months, and a large mirror on the second wall of the room. I bowed to thank Natsume, and as the old womanõ?Ts fading smile ended abruptedly as she slid the door open to walk into the dark hallway, she spoke to me in a strange tone of Japanese, that I still found difficult to understand after months living in Kyoto. What she had to say had became engraved in my mind, as a more encouraging advice than one of a discouraging nature.

õ?oGood luck with whatever it is that you are trying to find Hamamoto-san. However, I donõ?Tt expect you to stay for too long. There is nothing to study about geisha, it is all but a fanciful fantasy that scholars have long given up as long as the great walls of Yoshiwara were built. The karyukai may open its doors to the world, but soon the doors will be closed to them. People come and go, Hamamoto-san, only translucent butterfly wings flutter in this worldõ?.

With that said, the strange mistress of the Himawari inn left me in the darkened room, merely lit by a dim table lamp and the flapping sound of the bamboo leaves wavering through the April night.

****
I donõ?Tt feel American, and I donõ?Tt feel Japanese. I donõ?Tt feel anything. What makes a Japanese a Japanese, and an American an American anyway. I remember talking to my first Japanese teacher and she had said in her ever joking tone. õ?oAh, you can never feel Japanese, Mamoru-chan, you make too much sense, only Americans think and make sense. The Japanese donõ?Tt think too much, they donõ?Tt feel too much either, but what they say and what they think donõ?Tt really ever make senseõ?.
The only clear picture of life in my mind is an ink painting of a geisha holding her umbrella that I first saw in fatherõ?Ts studies when I was six. I donõ?Tt know whether it was just a fascination, but over the year, it has grown, this picture of life in my mind. This mere memento that Kitsune Hamamoto discarded when I turned twelve, got me through life. The strange slender face of the geisha had felt like the answer to everything that I needed to find in my life; of comfort, of beauty, even of an illusional perfection. Maybe it was because I never truly had a mother, a sister, a lover, a woman. So much so, that this faint ink painting has given me all.
But of course, like all other normal Japanese children, I had a mother. Her name is Kitsune Hamamoto, wife to the great Nakanishi Hamamoto, owner of the Hamamoto electronic corporation. Nakanishi married Kitsune he was twenty one and she was eighteen, all in all, their marriage fulfilled a lot of great purposes at the time.


- Cut rather strange huh? ^^ I''m WORKING ON THE REST!! EMAILS! =)


"Gomen nasai....demo..A****erui Sayuri-san.."