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Lost and Found
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"Mikagami, are you alright?" Hanabishi Recca asked worriedly as his friend opened his eyes.
It had nearly been three months since Mori Kouran's private assassins had last ambushed the Hokage. It was then that caused the water wielder to land in coma for all these time.
Hanabishi, WATCH OUT!" Mikagami Tokiya shouted as he threw himself in the path of Renge's flame in an attempt to shield his friend from the attack.
"Baka. Could you turn on the lights? How do you expect me to see in a dark room like this?" The flame-caster panicked as he looked around the hospital room. Bright sunlight were streaming through the windows, shining right onto the swordsman's face. The usually alert blue eyes seemed to be veiled by a light mist, scanning slowly around the room, as if looking for something to focus on.
"Hey, sea-monkey, you hear me? I asked you to turn on the lights." There was no response. All he could hear was the hurried footsteps of the younger teen.
"DOCTOR!!"
+++
The rest of the Hokage stood worriedly outside the hospital room, listening to what the doctor have to say about the patient's condition.
"Nothing seems to be wrong with him except for the fact that he could not see. We've checked his eyes and his brains; all had been fine. Not to worry as such cases are very common during the war, whereby soldiers forget how to see, how to hear etc."
"How long would it take for him to recover fully?"
"Maybe tomorrow, maybe a week, maybe a year. We don't know."
"Maybe never." Recca leant back against a pillar as realization dawned on him. It was then that the Hokage noticed how much weight their leader had lost in the course of these three months. The twinkle in his eyes was long gone; his eye bags had shrunken in, giving him a haggled look. Only sixteen and he looked sixty.
"Recca-kun…" Yanagi said softly, putting a comforting hand on her ninja's shoulder.
"I'll be alright, Hime." He then turned his attention back to the doctor. "Could I see him now?"
The doctor nodded. "Yes, but try not to remind him of his condition though he may seem to have taken it quite well."
"Not called Mikagami the ice block for nothing." Recca said as he pushed open the door to the swordsman's room.
+++
"One…two…three…four…five of you and nobody's talking. It must be one of God's miracles." Mikagami spoke up after a long silence settled in.
"Wow! Mi-chan, how do you know there's five of us in here without seeing?" Fuuko asked, only to receive a punch from Koganei for reminding the older teen of his condition.
"Don't have to mourn as if I'm dead, okay? And whoever it is, you don't have to hit Fuuko. She had not meant it."
"How…how do you know?" Domon asked, thoroughly amazed by Mikagami's words.
"I could hear six different sets of heartbeats in this room. Excluding myself, there should be five other people in this room. And soft as it may seem, Fuuko did mutter a 'ouch'."
For that day, all of them did manage to have a normal conversation among themselves, all ignoring the fact that there was a blind man with them. All Mikagami have to do was to sit there quietly and he was soon forgotten. Guess that was one of the advantages of not taking part in the group's daily conversation in normal days. Nobody noticed the look on Mikagami's face.
All except Recca.
+++
"Why are you still in the room?" Mikagami asked, sensing another person's presence even though the Hokage had already left fifteen minutes ago.
"I'm sorry, Mikagami." The flame-caster pulled out a chair to sit down beside his friend.
"What for? For sending a whole basket of fruit down my head just now?" Recca gave a soft chuckle, but stopped after he remembered what he was about to say.
"Mikagami, do you hate me?"
"The last thing I need right now is a sea-monkey beating around the bush with me. What is it that you want to say?"
"I…I mean, if not…for me, your eyes…" Mikagami raised a hand to stop him.
"Look, Recca, if I'd not stood between Renge's flame that day, you'd be the one laying here right now. Worse still, you could be dead and buried already. What will Yanagi do when that happens?"
"You…you…"
"Why the stammer again?"
"You called me Recca!"
"Oh. You have a problem with that?"
"No. Just that it sounds weird."
"So you prefer being called a sea-monkey."
"Certainly not."
"It seems so, sea-monkey."
"I'm not a sea-monkey."
"But you preferred to be taken as one."
"…"
+++
"Hai, otou-sama." The young girl skipped out of the posh office room, overjoyed that she had been given another mission by her "beloved" father.
"You are a good girl, Renge." The man mumbled softly to himself after the girl left his room.
"With you around, Hokage will be nothing."
"Watch out, Kurei. I shall wipe you out."
+++
"I'm surprised that they let you out this early. Your condition could not be that bad after all." Domon commented as Recca helped Mikagami into his father's car.
"My condition was never serious anyway. It's just that some people acted as if I broke my neck or something like that." Mikagami said as he firmly tried to brush Recca's arms off hi shoulders.
"I think my hands would rather stay where they are right now. Thank you very much." Recca said, tightening his grip on the older teen.
Mikagami looked as if he was about to say something, but thought better of it.
+++
"Okay, other than the run-in-sacked-him-and-conveniently-burn-down-the-house plan, what other ideas do you have in mind?" Aoi sat down at the table with Renge, chewing on the tip of her ballpoint pen.
"Hey, Aoi-chan, how do you know exactly what Renge-chan is thinking of?" Renge asked, utterly amazed by her friend's 'intelligence'.
That's the only thing you brain could come up with anyway. Aloud, Aoi said, "I believe I've a far better plan than that."
+++
Using his Ensui as a walking stick, Mikagami found his way to the couch and covered the sleeping Recca with a blanket.
Ever since he had been discharged out of the hospital, there had not been a day that had gone by without the flame-caster at his place, trying to take care of the swordsman. Not that Mikagami mind, but sometimes he really wonder if Recca was just trying to make up for his guilt.
Despite his current condition, Mikagami had never regretted his actions that day. Protecting the younger teen came as an instinct to him, as natural as one would try to protect oneself. But the reason as to why he had looked upon the flame-caster's welfare in priority to his own was unknown even to Mikagami himself.
It could be the protective instinct one would have for someone younger than oneself, but strangely he had not felt the same way towards Koganei or Ganko. No, that feeling was certainly something stronger. Concern? No, definitely something stronger.
Love? Certainly not!
I'm straight! With the entire female population in school after me, I can't possibly fall for a sea-monkey like him! Yes, he's cute. Wait, where did that come from?
I'm certainly going crazy. With that, Mikagami quickly decided to get himself a stroll in the nearby woods.
+++
The woods were certainly a good place for him to sort out his thoughts. With his sense of hearing sharper, Mikagami could now listen out for many sounds he had never bothered to do so before. The chirpings of the birds, the sound of the leaves when the wind rushed through them, the wonderful songs of Mother Nature.
"My, my, isn't this Mikagami?" A figure stepped out of the shadows of the trees.
"Who's there?" Mikagami got on his feet immediately, pointing the Ensui to where the voice had come from.
+++
"Listen up," Aoi was briefing Renge of her plan as they were being driven to their target's place.
"I've sent Mokuren to ambush him. As Mokuren had already became a plant, he had no more heartbeats to speak of. With his sense of sight gone, Mikagami will certainly have a hard time fighting him. Now, we would go and help him bring Mikagami back to Mori-sama. Together with Kirin's shingan and my madougu, we shall modify Mikagami's memories and I'm sure Mori-sama would be very proud of us."
"That's a great idea, Aoi-chan!"
+++
Mikagami could no longer stop himself from screaming in
pain. Damn, why must he lose his sense of sight at this time? If he could
see, that plant would have been dead by now.
"That's enough, Mokuren." That voice, it sounds familiar.
"Hai, Aoi-sama, Renge-sama." Great, I certainly have the worst luck today.
"We'd like you to make a trip with us to see Mori-sama, Mikagami Tokiya-san."
Darkness claimed him before he could reply.
+++
Recca woke up, finding himself soaked in cold sweat.
Mikagami, where is he?
Recca got up from the couch and saw a note taped from the other side of the window. It was written in a child's handwriting.
Recca-niichan,
Papa would like to
'borrow' Mikagami-niichan for a while. Papa said you could get Mikagami back
from him whenever you want to. :)
Renge-chan.
Damn.
+++
A lone tear trickled down Aoi's cheek when she knew about the instructions she was given.
Gomenasai, Mikagami-kun.
+++
End of Chapter 1