Idea adapted from an instalment volume #3 of the manga D.N.Angel by Yukiru Sugisaki.

M/M slash.

White Silk Ribbon

With the little enthusiasm I had, I pushed against the frosted glass door into the deserted section of the library. I tugged my jacket closer to my body, berating myself for volunteering to research for the impractical English project, and that librarian up at the front counter who decided that the air-conditioning should be switched on full blast.

I took an offhand glance at the back of the metal bookshelves. Nobody else around. Of course, I thought, rather listlessly. Who the hell would choose to stay back in campus on a Friday afternoon, what with Valentines’ Day just around the corner? And it wasn’t like any couple would have of better place to go than to make out in the school library.

But for the sake of getting into the teacher’s good books and heightening my chances of getting some miraculous bonus marks, I had to sacrifice my weekend.

. . . And probably my chance of getting a date, too.

February the fourteenth is somehow a much-dreaded day for those in school who haven’t exactly been paired up yet with someone else. And Tetsuya was smart enough to finally have the guts to give a present to his crush just after our last lesson — thus leaving me in the lurch, in the loneliness of singlehood.

Friendship, indeed.

I sighed, and eased myself between the narrow aisles, scanning the plastic stickers along the bases of the shelves and running a finger along the colourful labels of the Dewey Decimal System.

“Psychology . . .” I murmured, randomly picking a book with a thick black spine and silver words. Unveiling the Secrets of the Mind. If only that could let me learn some mind-reading. I’d really like to see what exactly makes the girls tick — to be precise, what makes them so hyped up over such a mindless, commercial holiday.

And then there were those annoying white silk ribbons that the girls were constantly giggling and dreaming about recently. Hell, even Tetsuya decided to give his girl one too! I rolled my eyes. I seriously didn’t understand why they were so popular among girls nowadays.

“A token of love,” Tetsuya had mused only days before. “That’s what they see it as.” I had shut myself up just in time then, before I started any incessant complaints about how overrated a piece of material had become.

I stared at the book in my hand for one good minute, then opened it. The tiny print swam before my eyes, and I squinted. Mind-reading didn’t just require intelligence and extreme dedication — it called for good eyesight too.

But amidst the textual stillness my ears caught a sound — a quiet opening of the door, a faint presence of someone, entering the reference section of the library. I turned my head, and caught nothing but a brief flash of red and black. My fingers pushed the book shut, and the person emerged from the bookshelf behind me.

I gave Hotaru a friendly smile. My mind simply registered him as an excellent lab partner — only slightly demented, in my opinion. Watching him calmly slice up any given specimen, dead or alive, to determine its anatomy was one of the most intriguing things I’d ever seen in my Biology lessons. And every lesson I would conveniently take a bold peek at his results, and copy it into my own report. Cloning is a branch in Biology, after all.

But somehow, I couldn’t see him as the library kind of person.

“What are you doing here?” I couldn’t help but ask. Then I thought that sounded annoyed, so I added, “Don’t tell me you volunteered to take part in that stupid project too?”

He paused in his steps, dilated green eyes blinking, as if trying to focus. Then he gave an elusive smile. “I was going to ask you that question. Shouldn’t you be off with your girlfriend or something as a prelude to Valentines’ Day?”

“Don’t remind me,” I muttered, eyes reverting to the rows of tomes waiting to be selected. “I don’t even have one.”

“Really.” He picked out a blue hardcover and browsed through it, then continued in a smaller voice. “I would’ve thought none of the girls are good enough for you.”

I looked at him in mock confusion and sarcasm. “Do I take that as a compliment or an insult?” Then I sighed. “Whatever it is, I’m just glad I don’t have to deal with any of those stupid ribbons or other mindless gifts like that.” I shoved the black book back into its place.

“Mindless?” he repeated, after a few moments of silence, a hint of amusement behind his word. “But really . . . what would you do when you do receive a ribbon like that?”

My finger paused at the spine of another reference book. There was something amiss in his question, but I didn’t know what it was. Before I could figure it out, however, I felt a long strip of silken material drape itself on my shoulders, smoothly sliding around the nape of my neck. A surreal tingle glided down my back.

I swallowed hard, involuntarily. White silk ribbon, I realised.

He swivelled me around with surprising ease, as though I were a dressmaker’s dummy on a light bronze stand — a living specimen vulnerable and powerless to the edge of his scalpel, to his every whim and fancy. It unnerved me, but I tried my very best to keep my composure. “When I receive a ribbon like this?” I asked coolly.

There was no reply, but his hand merely held the two strips of silk together, the ends lightly touching the hem of my shirt, not unlike a necktie.

. . . or a leash.

“When. Not if,” he agreed quietly. And without any warning whatsoever he tugged at the white silk ribbon, pulling me towards him; with another turn he had me riveted against the bookshelf, which shuddered wildly upon impact. I could feel the freezing metal panels through my clothes, numbing my arms and lower back. Tentatively I looked into his eyes of summer green: deep, intense, yet scintillating lushly — the biggest loophole in his disguise, a failure to hide his brimming eagerness beneath all that subtlety.

It occurred to me that I was taking in all this fairly well — the fact that this side of him was emerging, entirely different from what I saw him as. But it was precisely this part I suddenly found myself interested in: this anticipation, this unpredictability, this realization that it was me.

Tetsuya would probably have freaked out and fainted if it had been him.

His hair glowed a dreamlike reddish-brown in the late afternoon sunlight that streamed in from the clear glass windows, and I remembered to focus. What the hell are you doing?! I heard a small voice squeak inside my head. Probably my conscience. Get out before it’s too late. Don’t play along with him!

I half-closed my eyes. I did not know if that seemed avoidant or inviting, but I had already decided.

. . . Why not?

“But . . . this isn’t what I expected.” I pretended to fluster. “I thought it would be . . . different.”

“Different?” He weaved his fingers in between mine, and gently pushed my arms outwards, along the cold, cold shelf, rendering myself more and more susceptible to his advances. I vaguely noted the diminishing distance between the two of us, and the look of innocent inquisition on his face. “What’s wrong with different?”

Again I closed my eyes, and opened them only a couple of seconds later, attempting to lose myself in the abysses that were similarly trying to probe into my mind, to seek my hidden desires, to compliment his. The finely chiselled face, the enthralling eyes, the growing ardour of his: tempting, stirring, drawing me close, but still making me wish he were someone else.

Not that it really mattered much.

Slowly I leaned my head closer to his, and whispered, in the softest voice I could manage — as if not wanting anyone else to hear, as if teasing, taunting, challenging, alluring him. “I meant. . . the location.”

I did not know how he defined the last word, and neither did I wonder what it suggested to him. But his reaction did thrill me much more than any other girl’s would — his hands slid from my palms, down to the small of my back, resting in between my shirt and denim jacket, and his smile suddenly grew much more reassured, much more tender, much more voracious.

“Then I promise you a better one next time,” he murmured. And before I could decipher the actual meaning behind that line he had already closed in, reducing the bare space between our lips to nothing, stoking the dying heat within me with a strangely intense flame. I did not flinch, and neither did I resist. Never did I expect that it would be him, but it mattered no more right then.

His hands slowly slid up inside my shirt and up my back, warm against my skin, and I quivered slightly. It was curiously enticing, the way he held me — gentle as if I were delicate, yet snug enough for a seemingly secret comfort; close enough to reveal his yearning for something more, his pleasure as he kept exploring, like I were a personal belonging of his, accessible to none but him.

Subconsciously I wondered if the air-conditioning had broken down. My body felt stifling, but my outstretched arms felt very much exposed to an unfamiliar cold, and instinctively I withdrew them, curling them around his shoulders instead, as if clinging on, openly taking in whatever emotion he selflessly offered me. And all that I savoured — this forbidden bonding, and the surge of indescribable fervour and satisfaction that raged so rapidly along with it.

But eventually I pulled away, my heart pounding hard against my chest; my lips and face rapidly cooling; the room spinning without any indication of ceasing. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, dimly aware that I was clutching him tightly by the shoulders. I did not know if the dizziness was because I was too stupid to remember to breathe, too overwhelmed by what happened to, or too engrossed to.

“Are you okay?” I heard his voice. It sounded slightly different — more raw, more concerned, more breathless than mine. I flushed, as it dawned on me that he was no longer just my lab partner, and blushed some more as I brazenly wondered what he thought of everything that had happened earlier.

I released my grip on him. “Fine, I’m fine,” I said. And thinking that he wasn’t exactly convinced, I murmured, “I’m good.”

I felt his hands slip away from my waist, a rousing sensation lingering in their wake, and I almost tried to guide them back in place. But before I even tried, he took my chin on one closed fist, and tilted my head upwards, locking his eyes on mine, a satisfied smile on his face. “You are,” he whispered.

His eyes grew too intense and unreadable, and yet again I closed my eyes. I neither felt him do or heard him say anything more, because when I finally decided to take a peek, all I saw were rows and rows of thick volumes, and the frosted glass door slowly shutting.

I took one end of the white ribbon and pulled. The whole strip slid smoothly onto my palm, and I closed my fingers around the ribbon before it could fall off.

Mindless gift?

. . . Maybe not, I decided. Absently I took another book from a shelf, in the hope of having at least some project material for the weekend after all that . . . unexpected distraction.

Unveiling the Secrets of the Mind.

I smiled to myself, running my thumb over the embossed silver words on the black cover. Try unveiling mine, Tetsuya, I thought, as I pulled the door open and strolled into the rest of the empty library, awaiting the arrival of February the fourteenth.

-fin-