The first time Byakuren breaks her promise she thinks it will be easy to keep from now on.
It is hot and humid, the summer air from outside seeping through the thin walls of their house. There is nothing much else to do for two children of eleven and eight years old to do at the moment - their parents are off working in the village, and cold drinks like lemonade are too expensive. Besides, the both of them were instructed not to leave the house or let anyone in. So they sit across from each other at the rickety little table, and try their hand at whittling wood.
Byakuren holds the chunk of wood steady in her left hand, and peels off little shavings with her right. She wasn't quite sure what she wanted to make when she first started carving this piece, but now it's clear in her mind: A tiger. She holds the knife in her fist, struggling to etch the fine details of a whisker and stripes on the misshapen tiger's body - she isn't as good as her father is, so she thinks of asking him when he gets home. She continues scraping away at wood, tongue sticking out of her mouth in concentration, but she doesn't see Myouren pick up the knife to try and follow her example-
A sudden yelp disturbs the quiet and Byakuren looks up to see her little brother fighting back tears. He clutches his bloodied palm in one hand, the knife he was holding askew on the table.
"You cut yourself?" He nods wordlessly, eyeing the knife.
She shakes her head. She should have been keeping an eye on her brother, making sure he wasn't touching a knife of all things, and making sure he wasn't holding it the way she had been. Byakuren was lucky.
She washes off the wound with lukewarm water from the stream outside their house and bandages the cut on her brother's hand.
"It still hurts." Myouren frowns, tugging at the pale bandages wrapped around his palm.
"Don't pull at them," she says. "They'll come off."
"Okay." He tucks a hand into his pocket and stares up at his sister with bold brown eyes.
"I'm sorry. I should have been watching what you were doing." She leans down and wraps him into a hug, burying her face into his shoulder. Her parents asked that she take care of her brother when they had him, and here he is with a cut on his hand.
"Hey." She wipes the tears away from his cheeks with her thumb. "It's okay! Just be careful about these sorts of things."
"Can you teach me how to carve wood? I want my carvings to look pretty like yours - and so I don't hurt myself again." He cracks a giggle, and Byakuren laughs too.
"Of course. I promise."
She reminds herself of the other promise she made so long ago - when her brother was first born - and they walk home on the dusty road together, hand in hand.
The second time Byakuren breaks her promise she wonders if she'll ever really keep it.
She is fifteen years old this time, and is once more reminded of the fact that she has a brother to take care of, and can't just ask for special positions at the temple without thinking of his own progress.
When he asks her what's wrong and reaches out to her, she slaps his hand away and glares.
"It's all your fault," she mutters, hot tears threatening to spill from her eyes.
"What do you mean?" He takes a step back.
"It's all your fault! You're dragging me down - I can't do what I want because of you!"
"How am I holding you back? Everyone talks about how much of an amazing student you are, and how you're so eager to learn - if anything, you're the reason why everyone has such high expectations for me and I'm only eleven!"
"It's old enough to take care of yourself - I can't just baby you and let you hold me back forever! I want to do things without you! You know what you are? You're a hindrance, nothing but a hindrance! Everything I can't do is because of you! And if everyone expects so much of you, so be it! The world's going to expect a lot of you - get over it!"
"That's not something you can just get over - it's not like you're really even doing anything to help! Every time I mess up, all you do is say 'No, you're doing it wrong' and expect me to learn something!"
"You act as though that happens constantly! It doesn't!"
She can't even keep track of what they're saying anymore, with her throat burning and the overlapping of her and her brother yelling making her eardrums throb. She flings ugly word after ugly word after him, casually spilling thoughts she didn't even know she had out of her mouth.
"You're nothing but a burden, you know that? All you've ever done is drag me down, and that's all you'll ever do!"
Myouren flinches as if he's been slapped. And judging by everything that Byakuren's just said, he might as well have been slapped.
"Myouren-"
He turns away from her, and they share a moment of emptiness before she leaves.
My fault. My fault. Those are the words ringing in her head as she storms through the corridors of the temple, not even bothering to mutter half-hearted apologizes to people she bumps into.
It's my fault. I shouldn't have said anything. I should have just told him 'nothing' and moved on. I shouldn't have asked for anything more in the first place. I hurt my own brother - I can't take care of him.
She sits outside the temple. The sun sets, lighting up the sky in hues of lavender, orange, and deep blue. The first stars twinkle up in the sky, and Byakuren closes her eyes, pretending that she's all the way up there with the stars and moon and setting sun.
"Hey."
She can hear Myouren's voice, feel his presence next to her on the ledge. But she doesn't respond yet. She doesn't know what to say. And it seems as though he doesn't either, because he says nothing.
"I'm sorry." Byakuren breaks the silence. "I shouldn't have called you a burden, I shouldn't have just told you to get over it. I'm sorry for saying those things to you."
He says nothing.
"You're not a burden. You really aren't. I'm sorry."
Silence once more. Then-
"It's okay." He clings close to her. "I'm sorry too."
As before: Silence. But this isn't the sort of silence they both quietly dread - it's the kind they hope will last, because neither knows what to say to the other.
"Next time we'll both know better, I guess."
He leans against her and they stay like that, looking up and wondering if a shooting star will come.
The third time it's not even her fault, but Byakuren feels like it is.
She is twenty-six, her brother twenty-two. It's been three days: Three days since he first collapsed, three days since the coughing fit built up to something worse, three days since he's gotten sick.
She stays at her brother's bedside day and night, reading words from a scroll aloud to him mindlessly. He is pale and gaunt, with sunken cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. Sweat coats his forehead from the high fever he's had, and no amount of cold washcloths or anything seems to be making it stop.
He'll try to speak to her but all that ever escapes his mouth is garbled coughing. There is a point in the middle of the night, when her eyes are less discerning on their own and Byakuren has to resort to candlelight to see what she's reading, when he reaches for her hand and squeezes it faintly. She looks back down at Myouren, paused in her reading.
He tries to say something to her, but his words are raspy and dry and barely audible. The only things she can make out are "Byakuren" and "love". Then he closes his eyes and shivers, burrowing himself under the covers in sleep.
After a while, Byakuren succumbs to fatigue, too.
In the morning she wakes up and finds that his eyes have closed for the last time and he's stopped breathing.
Everyone at the funeral tells her that it was such a tragedy, that they're so sorry for her loss. She accepts their condolences, tasting bitter tears on her tongue and turning away from others every chance she gets.
"Byakuren, make sure to take care of your brother and keep him away from harm - promise."
"Promise."
It's her fault. It's a promise she couldn't keep.
a/n: hello, it's me! back from the dead once more… not having posted anything for over a year…
my reasons for this are simply because i've become much more invested in working on my own original stories in terms of writing - i still do draw touhou stuff from time to time!
i doubt i'll write much more fanfic in general, but i had this idea and i didn't want to lose it. byakuren's really quite an interesting character, and quite a contradictory one at that. she is described as kind, yet the main reason she really was so friendly to youkai was because she feared death after the death of her brother. this got me thinking: what on earth was her relationship with her brother like? canon doesn't really give us much information at all, so i thought of this.
oh! i should mention the title of this fic was from the song "the other side of paradise" by glass animals - it doesn't really have anything to do with the story, but it was a song i was listening to as i wrote this.
i hope you enjoyed. reviews are very much appreciated. take care, everyone~