100% Orange Juice – Unconventional Art Contest Entry

Hime drifted peacefully through the air, both her hair and dress waving just slightly in the wind. She may have been looking for someone, but that didn’t mean she was in any particular hurry. She would hurry for her friends, to savor their brief lifetimes as much as she could, but with her love she had forever.

Snow waved in her face, which she did not terribly enjoy. Usually, Hime preferred to spend her time wherever it was warm – migrating with the birds, she kept one home in the northern hemisphere and another in the south. Suguri, however, never seemed to mind the cold, and it wasn’t rare to find her in snowy places like this.

Of course, it’s not like Hime was just looking for Suguri in random places. The old cyborg – not like Hime was much younger – usually let off some weak interference, so it wasn’t hard to figure out her general location. Hime had narrowed things down to one specific island – she believed it was named Hokkaido – and was trying to pinpoint her location.

Hime flew over an old building – one story, though fairly wide, and seemingly designed to be inconspicuous. She was ready to ignore it – there were plenty of old buildings like this, ones Suguri said were from before the war – but that faint static of Suguri’s prescence hummed stronger as she got near. Hime floated slowly to the ground and opened one of the doors, before quickly closing it behind herself.

The building was… shockingly well-maintained, on the inside. The lights built between the tiles of the dropped ceiling were still shining bright, and the beige walls and stark white floors were spotlessly clean. If Sora had seen this building, she’d still think it was in use… but Hime knew well that this style of architecture hadn’t been in use for millenia. Not to mention, she couldn’t see anyone around…

Outside of the hallways, it seemed almost every room was a laboratory of some sort. Everything was neatly packed away in all of them, and most of them had their lights off. Still no signs of life, besides the signal Suguri emitted. Both the labs and the halls had pictures lying around, mostly old paintings of natural scenes that seemed to have been printed out. There was one portrait, though – a kind-looking man with white hair, glasses, and a scar on his cheek, labeled as Dr. Yukito Dylan, founder of Project One. That was what Suguri said the project to restore the planet was called, right? The two must have known each other.

Eventually, in some far-off corner, Hime spotted a set of stairs, leading downwards, behind an unmarked door. It would seem that the building’s residents were intent on hiding there was more than one level. They went quite a ways down, so Hime just floated down the center rather than following the stairs. It seemed Suguri’s signal was strongest around the twenty-first floor down.

Hime opened the door and was greeted by a sight that, if not for the ceiling, would not have belonged indoors. There were ferns, grasses, bugs, and small mammals, all beneath a forest of orange trees that were just beginning to bud.

Near the center, Suguri sat beneath a dead tree, talking to herself. “…Everyone’s so happy. You would have loved to see it…” Her eyes were closed, and she had a smile on her face that showed just a hint of sadness.

Hime fully let herself down onto the ground – something she did not do often – and walked up to Suguri. “Suguri… what is it that you’re doing in a lonely place like this?”

Suguri opened her eyes and shifted slightly. “I could ask you the same thing, Hime.” She didn’t say it like she was upset or surprised.

Hime smiled. “I was looking for you, of course.”

Suguri looked up towards the ceiling. “Shouldn’t you be spending time with your friends? The Shifu Brands, that is. We don’t know how long they’ll last.”

Hime’s eyes widened. “Suguri, is something the matter?” She moved in next to Suguri, sitting beside her.

Suguri sighed. “My dad… even the tree we buried him under has been dead for millenia. Earth coming back to life was a dream that started with him, and… he never got to see it.”

Hime let out a small “ah” as the situation sank in for her.

“This was our home, you know. Even when I was a kid, he let me stay here so we wouldn’t be far apart. This probably sounds stupid, but… this would have been his ten-thousand and seventy-first birthday… and his first since the residents of your ship settled here. I felt like returning here, and spending some time with him.”

Hime looked up, towards the budding orange blossoms. “The two of you were quite close, from the sound of it.”

Suguri started tearing up a bit. “…Until I met you, he was the only person I could really talk to. When I was young, people only knew me through him… and after that, everyone was too busy looking up to me to really see me.”

Hime yanked Suguri towards her and started hugging her tightly. “It truly is painful, isn’t it? For all those millenia, we had no one who could understand us. But… we no longer have to hide everything away, not when we have each other.”

Sugrui began shedding tears as she hugged Hime back. “He would have loved to meet you…”

Hime pet Suguri on the head and smiled. “Would you like to tell me about him?”

“His… his name was Yukito,” Suguri said, “there’s a picture of him on the first floor. He always seemed relaxed, even when he was hard at work… These orange trees were some of the first plants he got to grow without hooking them up to life support. Even if the environment had to be controlled, it meant a lot to him…” She chuckled softly. “When I asked him why he picked orange trees, said he wanted to know what fresh oranges tasted like. That’s the whole reason he picked that species to bring back first…”

“A wise man indeed,” Hime said. “I truly never did understand the appeal of oranges until I had a fresh one. As Saki says, the produce on the ship was ‘no good.'”

Suguri smiled. “That was my dad, alright. He always sounded kind of airheaded when he talked about his ideas, but… he always knew how to pull them off. Even if he never got to see it, I… I fulfilled his dream, didn’t I? Ugh, sorry, you shouldn’t have to listen to this old girl ramble…”

Hime giggled. “Ah, to get back at you, perhaps I must ‘ramble’ about my own parents.”

Suguri pulled herself out of the hug, before rolling back to her old sitting position. “Bring it on, then.”

And so, the two talked about families loved and lost, releasing those feelings buried deep for thousands of years in the span of a night.